Swelling with love
by IWfan53
Summary: In which an alternate universe's Susan Storm shows her team and Reed Richards in particular just how much an elastic body can be good for. Obviously AU and Reed/Sue
1. Chapter 1

Chapter one: Hooking up. In which "Big Brain" Reed Richards rediscovers the problems and pleasures of having a physical body.

AN: This story takes place in the continuity of What If Vol 1 #6 (for the most part at least if you're gonna step outside regular continuity to start with you might as well keep doing it when you find it appropriate) in which the Fantastic Four end up gaining different powers. Ben gains a pair of dragon like wings and the ability to fly and calls himself the Dragonfly. Johnny gains the ability to transform his body into a living metal version of itself that in addition to being super strong and super tough can also interface and control electronic equipment and calls himself the Mandriod. Susan gains an elastic body, which might as well be the exactly the same as what Reed gained in the canon Marvel universe and called herself Ultra Woman. Reed became a psychic bodiless brain known as Big Brain that acted as adviser to the other three. Victor Von Doom captures Reed with the intention of using him to power a time machine, and the other three race off to rescue him. In the end Reed manages to send his mind into Victor's body, and send Victor's mind into his brain right before it's destroyed, leaving nothing of Victor Von Doom behind, and Reed now having his incredible intelligence, psychic powers, Victor Von Doom's body, armor, and finally an elastic Susan Storm who all of a sudden he can now once again have physical contact with. If all of that seemed like too much to handle, don't worry, I'm in the process of writing a prequel to this story called Original Twist that can be found at http: /www. fanfiction. net/s/ 4445237/1 /OriginalTwist (remove all the spaces I added to keep from mangling it) and reading it should not only help you understand this story, but be a good read all on its own...

Sorry in advance for any errors that remain, I'm more of an idea man then an editor, but I tried my best so it should be pretty understandable.

Reed Richards swivelled his wheeled chair around as he heard the familiar sound, it was a combination between the slithering of a snake, and rubbing a ones palms against a balloon filled with air. No it wasn't a familiar 'sound', not really. The accident their attempted flight into space had turned into ended up granting himself, Susan Storm, her brother Jonathan, and Benjamin Grimm incredible powers and thus allowed them to become the Fantastic Four, had also left him unable to 'hear' anything for a very long time.

Like the other three, he had gained quite a lot, but unlike with the other three, his powers had come at a steep price. His already impressive mental abilities had been multiplied many times over and expanded past the realms of simple genius into the near impossible, allowing him to preform psychic feats that he would have considered impossible if he hadn't been actively responsible for them. But, he had also lost everything except his brain. The rest of his body, even his skull, had been destroyed in the accident, leaving behind as a brain that was capable of surviving without any sort of external protection.

He had thought he'd be stuck that way forever, even going so far as to design an intricate system of pneumatic tubes that had allowed his mind to move about the Fantastic Four's headquarters at will. But then his old college rival Victor Von Doom had come back into the picture, offering Reed a chance to once again have a body, and despite his scepticism Reed had eventually agreed to the idea.

Victor however had betrayed him, and almost killed not only Reed, but the three people he cared most about in the world, the sight of Ben, Johnny, and most of all Susan laying helpless before Victor had raised such emotion within his mind that even if only for a few moments had increased his psychic powers beyond their normal limits, and when the dust had cleared Reed had ended up with a body, Victor's ironically enough.

So while previous he had simply 'comprehended' the things going on around himself, or anyone he knew well enough and cared to focus intently on, that was no longer the case. Now once again he also possessed the rudimentary five senses of smell, sight, taste, touch, and hearing. This, like his powers seemed to be equal parts (no not equal parts, though it did have portion of both doubtlessly) blessing and curse. It hadn't taken him long to notice that having a human body's needs and abilities seemed to diminish his psychic abilities. Granted, since he'd only had this body for a few hours, the decrease in his powers might turn out to be nothing more then his mind needing time to properly recalibrate itself to its new situation.

Pushing aside as many of the recent events in his life as he could, Reed decided that he might as well vocalize his thoughts, since it would be easier then broadcasting them mind to mind at the moment. "Hello Susan, something the matter?" Susan Storm who now went by both her birth name and her superheroine identity of Ultra Woman stretched her pliable body across the room, then pulled it back into its normal form. There she stood before Reed, looking more or less exactly like she had before they had gained their powers, a phrase that Reed knew for a fact would never be applied to him.

"Actually Reed, I came in here to see if you were getting along all right. I know that as a brain you could just sort of, exist, but now that you've got a body again I was worried that you might be getting hungry or thirsty." Reed shook his head and returned his attention back to his work. "No, I don't need any particular physical nourishment at the moment. Besides, I feel like I hardly have time for such things considering all the work I have to take care of at the moment.

It seems a shame to undo something that I spent so much time working on, but I'll need to dismantle the transportation system I set so that I could move through the building. It serves no useful purpose now, and though I can't figure out how at the moment, there is always the off chance one our foes might be able to find a way to use it against us. Not to mention I need to retool Victor's armor, at the very least I'll have to repair the damage it suffered when he used it to subdue the three of you. After that, I probably should find a way to make its design somewhat less menacing, and then, well even though Victor was obviously a genius, there still exist several way I can improve upon his orrigional designs."

Susan's head stretched off her neck and lowered itself down across the back of his chair so that when she spoke it was directly into his ear. "Reed, stick out your tongue so that I can see it." Reed turned around again to face Susan, someone unused to the way she could sculpt her body would have no doubt found the head connected to its body only by a neck stretched beyond all logical lengths disturbing, if not outright revolting. Luckily Reed had spent a considerable amount of time watching Susan stretch her body, both in combat and for more mundane purposes, so he didn't miss a beat.

"If I tried to it'd only end up pressed against the faceplate of this mask. That problem aside, why would you ask me to do something so ridiculous?" Susan stretched a gloved hand over, stuck out her own tongue for a moment pressing a finger to it, before snapping the hand back to her body, and pulling her tongue back behind her teeth. "Simple, because if I could feel your tongue then I'd know how moist it is. Reed, for all you know you are hungry and thirsty, but since your mind isn't used to dealing with such trivial bodily concerns, it's subconsciously ignoring them."

Reed was surprised in more ways then one by Susan's words, both at the nature of her theory, and that she herself had come up with it. He tired hard to make sure his voice was more intrigued then mocking, but unfortunately whatever his mind thought, the words were produced by the vocal chords that still belonged to Victor Von Doom and thus were much more suited for the latter purpose. "What makes you so sure Susan?"

Her body casually walked over, the neck and head returning to their normal position, one being planted directly on top of the other. "Because while I can't speak explicitly for Ben or Johnny, I know for a fact that I had issues getting used to the gap between my brain and my new body. The first couple of nights after we got our powers, I'd have nightmares, and I'd wake up my body strewn all over the room. There wouldn't be anything I could do about it either, I'd just lie their like limp spaghetti, until eventually I realized that to fully control my powers I had to think about not controlling them.

I couldn't just order my limbs to pull themselves back together with firm direct orders, but when I started painting a mental pictures with soft smooth strokes, and then I'd get whatever I wanted." Underneath the metal mask Reed blushed. "I'm sorry Susan, I don't know how you having problems like that could have escaped my notice at the time..."

Susan just sighed and shook her head dismissively. "Don't worry about it Reed, those first few days put a lot of strain on all of us, between learning how to control our powers, figuring out how we would announce ourselves to the world, and designing the Baxter Building to serve as our headquarters, it would be easy to miss a couple little things. It wasn't like I was in any real danger, and now I've got using my powers down pat. I was even able to slip into your lab through that supposedly 'air tight' door of your's."

One of the advantages to psychic communication was that you never said anything until you had time to think it through, simply vocalizing your "thoughts" could lead to saying things that you regretted even as they came out of your mouth. What Reed found emerging from "his" lips was a more or less textbook example. "I'll have to fix that." Before Susan could mold her features into a disapproving stare Reed began to explain as quickly as possible.

"I'm sorry, it's just that since most of the building and my lab equipment is designed to be accessed psychically rather then physically, there are a lot of parts of it that need to be redesigned for greater ease of use now that I can take part in more conventional interactions with my equipment. As for the door, I wasn't trying to keep you out in particular Susan, I just want to make sure that my lab is secure. I keep many pieces of equipment in here that could prove extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, and for all we know there's a supervillian or supervillianess who is able to shape and mold their body the same way you are, I want to make sure they wouldn't be able easily bypass my security systems."

Luckily even between the facemask and hood of Victor's outfit, its wearer's eyes were still visible, apparently Susan both saw and empathised with the look of abstract fear that resided within Reed's at the moment. "Tell you what, I won't say anything about you double plating those doors with whatever special metal they're made out of, if you'll leave them open for the next minute or two. At the very least I'm not leaving this place till I've seen you drink a cup of water."

Reed looked around his lab and hopped that however late it was, Susan was still in the mood for levity. "That'll be a difficult trick to pull off, since there aren't any sinks or other sources of water, let alone cups in here." Susan just smiled and waved a somewhat lengthened finger in Reed's face. "Okay fine, my legs aren't leaving the room until I've seen you at least drink a cup of water. Now then, would you mind opening the doors? I can probably see myself out, but I can't slide my way back in under the worlds lowest limbo pole with a cup of water in hand."

Reed nodded, and focused mentally willing the doors open. It took more effort then he remembered it used to, a hand operated system with passwords, finger prints, or any of the dozens of other ways (possibly all of those ways operating together just to be 100 sure) would probably prove a good idea in the future. Just as she promised, Susan's legs didn't leave the room, only her upper torso did, stretching off on its merry way to one of the building's many kitchens.

As Reed watched her (or at least a significant portion of her) leave, he took a moment to marvel at what was clearly a direct violation of everything he knew about physics. Not just the elasticity of Susan's body, but the fact that her legs could remain upright while her upper body was stretching its way halfway across the Baxter Building. Even assuming her outstretched body was lighter then normal, the sheer amount there was of it should have made her legs topple over.

That particular problem considered, he went back to his work, until a sound more or less just like the one that had heralded Susan's arrival filled the lab. As he turned around, once again Susan's body snapped back to its normal proportions and she offered him a glass of water.

Reed had taken some time to figure out exactly how to operate Victor's armor before getting to work on anything else, (especially the weapons, it would hardly do for him to activate one of them accidentally) so he knew just how to deal with the problem of the facemask having no gap for him to drink through. He tapped a small portion of it and a metal straw extended from the mask through which he was able to drink.

When he finally finished draining the cup, in the process his body reminding him of what the sensation of drinking water felt like, he looked for a place to put the empty cut down. However since his lab had been designed back when he was just a brain, the place was extremely sparse when it came to niceties like tables and chairs. Which brought another problem to mind, he was sitting in the only chair in the room.

"Not only do I have no idea where to put this, but I just realized that I can't exactly offer you a seat either Susan..." Susan just took the cup from his hands, then stretched her arm over and left it resting somewhat precariously on top of one of the many pieces of machinery that filled the lab.

"Don't worry about it Reed. Ever since I've gained these powers, it's not exactly super strength or super endurance, but I can't ever remember my legs getting tired once since I became Ultra Woman." Reed took a moment to closely examine the shapely legs in question. "Well considering everything we've been through since we gained our powers, and the difficulty I would have had preforming any physical examination, it's not as if I've really examined the exact nature of how any of us were changed. For all we know, you might not actually have muscles or bones left in your body to get tired from standing around. Your bodily structure might be closer to that of an amoeba, except your body finds its current shape a more natural form to assume when at rest then the usual amorphous blob."

The look in Susan blue eyes told Reed that he had just gone and really put his foot in it, and to a much greater degree then when he had made comments about the impenetrability of the door. "That's all I am to you Reed, a lab experiment? An amoeba that just happens to resemble the woman named Susan Storm?"

Reed tried desperately to make her understand. "Not at all, I was just coming up with a theory that might explain your condition from a purely scientific point of view, you must know that there are other factors involved in how I really look at you." Susan sighed deeply, and her legs seemed to lengthen letting her truly tower over him. "And what are those other factors? I know that we're teamates, but, do you still love me the way you said you did before we got our powers?"

This question at the very least was easy, in fact it couldn't have been more easy if he'd been asked what two plus two was. "Of course I do Susan, do you still love me?" Susan hung her head in a gesture of defeat which was strangely at odds with her words. "Yes. I figured that if there are women out there who still love their husbands even when they're in comas, even though we aren't married, I figured it would have been improper of me to let what happened to you come between us. If there are people out there who manage to keep on loving someone even when they only have a body without a mind to love, I should be able to make do with a love that was a mind without a body. Does that make you happy?" The last sentence sounded almost accusing.

"Of course it does Susan, I already told you, I still love you. But I don't understand why we're practically shouting at each other if we're both supposedly in love with the other." The first response that Reed got was Susan suddenly stretching her body out, and wrapping her chest around Reed's midsection pinning his arms to his sides, and his back to the chair. "Because it isn't easy to be in love with someone, and yet not be able to express it. I think that's been problem we've both had to deal with for quite a while now, and the fact that we've been working together on the Fantastic Four, that I've felt your mind mentally rubbing up against mine countless times has only made it worse. We couldn't actually get any physical sense of intimacy, and yet we were always hanging around each other, until now at least, can I touch you Reed?"

There was something incredibly wistful in Susan's voice that Reed couldn't quite put a name on, it was blend of too many things. He decided to simply give the most obvious answers he had on hand. "If you hadn't noticed Susan, you're already touching me..."

Susan's head, which was once again residing right next to Reed's sighed deeply. "No, not just like this Reed. I mean yes, at the very least it is nice to actually have a you I can physically I touch without fear of harming, but I want to be able to press my bare hand against yours, if nothing else."

Reed's left hand was currently covered by Doom's remaining gauntlet, and since the right gauntlet had been destroyed, he had simply wrapped it up in cloth after getting back to the Baxter Building. "Of course you can Susan, but it's not really my hand. Not to mention it'd be easier for me to untie that bandage it if you'll let me move my arms." Susan loosened her grip, Reed had seen Doom's armor defeat all three of the other members of the Fantastic Four in combat simultaneously, but that was a memory. The feeling of Susan's body coiled around his, how easily it had held his limbs immobile, that was in there hear and now. Susan might not have problems controlling her powers any more, but he doubted she had reached the full extent of what they were capable of.

Susan watched with a slightly bemused look on his face as he began to undo the cloth wrapping which was more for simple convenience then any real need. "Reed, is Victor ever going to come back?" Reed shook his head as he paused in his work momentarily. "Not a chance, I can't feel anything left of his mind, even his memories, and if there was anyone who would be able to feel something like that, given my psychic powers and that I currently occupy his body it probably would be me." Susan just nodded having already heard this from him before.

"All right then. Since even with our luck, weather it is astoundingly good or bad I can't quite tell at the moment, odds are you're going to be spending the rest of your life in this body right?" Reed nodded and Susan repeated the gesture as if to simply confirm her own thoughts. "Then seeing how you're going to be stuck in it, and it's original owner isn't going to back looking for it, I think by the time tested principle of 'finder's keepers, loser's wheepers' that I can refer to it as your body. For simplicities sake if nothing else.

If I was able to keep on loving you when you were just a brain in a jar, even if this entire several story building was the jar in question, then I think I'll be able to bring myself to love you in this body every bit as much as I loved you in your last one. Though I suppose we should both be counting our blessings that you had a rival in college named Victor Von Doom, instead of having a relationship that ended extremely badly with a girlfriend named Victoria Von Doom. Wouldn't that be one more lovely twist we have to worry about dealing with in already knotty lives?"

Reed agreed as he silently counted his blessings, not only did he once again have a body, but it was one of the same gender and age as his old one had been. Not to forget just how useful Victor's armor would prove to be, now he'd be able to lead the Fantastic Four into battle both mentally and physically. With those gifts under his belt, however badly today had started out, it was obviously coming to a very happy ending indeed.

As Reed tossed aside the strips of cloth Susan much more easily removed the blue glove she had been wearing on her own right hand, and then slowly stretched it forward. Reed took it, and for a few moments the two just sat their, for the first time in months actually touching skin to skin. "Your right, 'Victor Von Doom's' hands are a lot larger then Reed Richards' were. Also your grips a little firmer."

"Or maybe your hand is just a little softer since the last time we did this." "There might be something to that." Against his initial instincts Reed found that he couldn't stop himself as he slowly began to apply a little more pressure then necessary to Susan's hand. Carefully feeling out the way that instead of staying firm, it just molded itself around whatever pressure he put on it.

"So this really doesn't hurt?" Susan shook her head and smiled. "I've broken nails, before I got my powers of course, that were more painful then this." At the moment Reed happened to have been absent mindedly transforming Susan's hand from an appendage with digits to a pink sphere. He released it and watched as it quickly reverted back to its normal shape. "Amazing, simply amazing."

Susan nodded. "I'm not super tough the way that Johnny is, but once I got a good handle on my powers, I don't think I've really felt anything hurt me a long while. I mean there have been impacts, things that have put so much stress on my body that I blacked out or at least went a little loopy, but nothing that actually hurt. It's half, no make that three quarters really fun and one quarter a bit unnerving. I mean I bet I could jump of the top of the Baxter Building, scream all the way down, and then even though I'd splatter across the concrete like a bug on a windshield when I landed, afterward that I could just pull myself back together and walk it off without so much as a scratch."

As Reed took Susan's hand once again it turned into a pink sphere, though this time it did so by stretching itself over Reed's hand and entrapping it within her 'palm', instead of the other way around. "I'd prefer you don't test that theory, just on the off chance it doesn't work." To his surprise Susan delivered a small kiss to the portion of his mask that covered his cheek. "That's a sweet thing to say, but don't worry about it. Even if I do find myself bungie jumping without a chord, or sky diving without a parachute, all I have to do is make my body as wide across and thin as possible. That way the first updraft I hit turns me into literal a human parachute. You might not have 'seen' it at the time, but I managed to make sure even Johnny in his Mandroid form had a soft landing that way when we were entering Doom's castle.

If I could slow the descent of that couple hundred pounds of metal which I care about, I could probably do the same thing for you in you in that suit of armor." Susan released Reed's hand and beneath the faceplate he smiled. "That's a kind offer, but I think I'll wait till I've got rockets powerful enough to keep me airborne or at least slow my descent installed somewhere on this armor before I try it. There's nothing like having your first body more or less shot out from under them so to speak, to make sure that you want to take good care of your second."

Susan began to wrap herself a little tighter around Reed's chest, not enough to make it hard for him to breath, just making sure he was doubtlessly aware of her presence. "You do that, and I'll help you do it to, and after the new Fantastic Four takes the field against a couple of supervillians you'll get the hang of it in no time."

Reed's arms were still free and he placed his gauntleted left one along the strands of Susan holding him to the chair. "Firstly Susan we're hardly a new version of the Fantastic Four, it's still you me, Ben and Johnny. Secondly, you'll help me do it? I'm not going to make a very good husband if I not only can't take care of my wife, but need her to take care of me."

In response Susan just began to loop her neck around Reed's about half a dozen times before finally deciding to speak up. "Reed you've always looked after me, and you kept doing it for me and all of the Fantastic Four even when you were Big Brain. I'm just offering to do what I can to return the favor. Remember, I've got the body that seems like it sprang out of a cartoon and keeps bouncing back whatever happens to it, you're just a man in a suit of armor. Someone could drop the proverbial fifty ton anvil on me and not only would I be unhurt, but I could probably squeeze my body out from underneath it without much trouble. It only takes one can opener to leave you vulnerable."

Reed firmly placed a finger to his forehead and hoped some of his smile was visible through his eyes, however little logical sense that made. "It's going to have to be one very high tech can opener by the time I'm done retooling this suit of armor. In addition to the shields I'm also planning on adding in a self contained magnetic field generator that should make cause any conventional metal bullet to take the path of least resistance around my body."

Susan kissed his other cheek, or at least tried to, but only ended up with a mouthful of metal once again. "That's the Reed Richards I remember, it doesn't matter what the problem is, he'll come up with a technological solution for it. By the way, do you think that you could take off the mask? I'm worried that if my lips aren't warm enough I'll end up getting them stuck to that thing the way Johnny once did when he was six years old and licked a frozen flag pole."

Susan chuckled at her own joke, but her request was more serious then she realized. "If you really want me to. But Victor's oversized ego alone wasn't the only reason he decided to wear a mask, what's under here isn't pretty to say the least." Susan just sighed once again, bobbing her extended neck up and down. "If you want to make the mask part of your uniform then I won't complain, but your going to have to take it off sooner or later, to eat if nothing else. The sooner I see what's under it, the sooner I can start getting used to it, and eventually start loving it."

Reed sighed, faced with Susan's determination he could make no reasonable counter argument. So he activated the hidden button that he'd found would loosen his mask enough that it could be removed by hand. As he did so he also pulled back the hem of the green cloak. He'd seen what was underneath in a mirror beforehand, and indeed it wasn't pleasant. The worst part of it was that doubtlessly most of the damage had been self inflicted.

Well technically all of it had been, if Victor had listened to him then he never would have suffered that original face scarring that evidently drove him to madness. But that one smallish scar on the left side of his face was nothing compared to the rest of it. The only explanation that Reed could find for it was that Doom must have pressed the mask to his face the moment it was forged without giving it time to cool.

Which was why most of the face that Reed's mind now resided behind was burnt a leathery black, which was made even more repulsive by the few patches of still pale unburnt skin around the eyes. At first Susan was understandably shocked into silence at the sight of it, though she managed to put on a brave face when she finally did speak up. "So for starters, instead of brown hair and eyes you've now got black hair and blue eyes."

If nothing else, the fact that Susan had at least tried to find a silver lining to this particular cloud was rather reassuring. Granted if being disembodied brain hadn't been a deal breaker, then a visage that would have done the Phantom of the Opera proud probably shouldn't have even registered, but he couldn't have known for sure until he actually saw Susan's reaction with "his own" eyes. "Thank you for saying that Sue, but why don't you just get it out of your system and react the way you really want to."

She did, and it was not at all how Reed thought she would. Susan elongated her neck a little more, and planted a long passionate kiss right on Reed's lips with such force that the pressure she put on his burnt skin actually hurt a little. After what seemed like the most wonderful hour (but was probably only the most wonderful minute) of his life Susan finally pulled back. "There, aren't you glad I got that out of my system?"

Reed himself sobbing slightly. "I'm sorry Susan." Susan leaned in her neck a little closer then she had before the kiss, but they were hardly lip to lip. "For what?" Reed sighed as he pointed at his now charcoal colored lips. "Because Victor lost most of the nerve endings in his face when he did, whatever he did to it, so I could barely feel just how much you love me."

Susan's own blue eyes began to glisten slightly. "Really? You know what that sounds like to me? A challenge, and if there's one thing that being Ultra Woman has taught me, it's how to rise to a challenge. So with that in mind, I bet you'll feel this." She opened her mouth and her tongue shot out like a reddish pink serpent. It easily slipped into Reed's mouth, past his teeth, and wrapped itself around his toung like that same serpent capturing a slow witted field mouse.

Reed certainly couldn't help but feel like prey as Susan's tongue mercilessly (but at same time gently) jerked his own back and fourth in what had to be if not the worlds best French kiss. Finally it ended, and Susan yanked her tongue back into her own mouth, leaving Reed panting in surprise for a few seconds before he finally spoke up. "I felt that, I felt every bit of that, but what about Ben?"

Susan pulled back slightly and wiggled her neck in some kind of zig zag pattern that Reed guessed was her attempt to shrug without shoulders that he could see at the moment. "What about him dear?" Reed sighed deeply. "It's not as if I went poking around in your head for kicks, or for any other reason, but I couldn't help but notice that after the accident the two of you started to grow a little closer, won't he be somewhat upset by this?"

Susan smiled imperiously, her face perfectly summing up the expression about the cat who had just swallowed the canary. "Reed, Ben is smarter and more sensitive then a lot of people give him credit for, that's something that caused me to be interested in him, because he reminded me of you. But he was never anything more then a, well safety boyfriend, if you'll accept the expression.

Yesterday it was comforting to know that if I ever woke up, and just couldn't deal with the gap you being nothing more then a brain had put on our relationship, I could always count on him being there for me in several different ways. It was only really a 'relationship' in the sense of the fact that we saw a lot of each other and he was the only male body who I was spending a lot of time around who wasn't related to me by blood. After we got back from Doom's castle I was going to go to him and tell him that I still loved you, except that I ended up running into him on his way to tell me that he already knew how I felt first.

So here we are once again, just two concenting adults in love with each other. I for whatever reason am not as creped out by your new face as you expected to me, are you creped out any by me?" Reed's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Why would I be creped out?" Susan stretched out her arms placing them on the arms of the chair, then resting her neck on them. "Well how about because I'm not the woman I used to be."

Reed mentally braced himself for the sense of pain brushing his charred lips up against Susan's was going to bring with it, then leaned as far forward as he could, planting his own passionate kiss on her lips. She returned his passion, and they were both smiling once again after he pulled away. "Of course not, your even better." Susan slowly unwound herself from around Reed, her entire body practically humming with delight. "Really, the entire less of a woman more of an amoeba thing doesn't freak you out?"

Reed just kept right on smiling. "Well as I already said, from a purely scientific point of view it deeply intrigues me." Susan's went form simply standing their to stretching out her upper body, letting it drift back and forth slightly, like the proverbial snake before is charmer. "And from the point of view of Reed Richards looking at Susan Storm, the woman who he claims to love?"

Reed stood up, suddenly feeling much more confident then he had in a long time. Ever since he had lost his body, even though he had been nothing more then a brain, he had still needed to sleep, he had still dreamed, and how many dreams had he gone through when he had somehow gotten his body back? It felt like more then even he could count. For all he knew, this was another one of them, but he didn't think it was.

All of the others had been too perfect, too easy, too fractured, he'd simply woken up, sometimes with his powers, sometimes without them in his old body. Sometimes it meant that they had never gone on that flight, sometimes it meant that they'd never gained powers. But in one and all, he'd once again woken up, found himself a man with a body, and he'd gone and confessed his love to Susan.

But it was because today didn't feel that right that it also felt so much better, so much more real. He wasn't sure how ending up inside the body of his old college rival seemed more believable then any of those dreams, but it did. He didn't profess his love for her on some balcony overlooking a beautiful full moon and the ocean with the words wrapped up in a beautiful poem this time. He had done it in his lab, and it had been wrapped up in an argument, but there was some wonderful believability to it. One way or another, the only way to tell if it was a dream or not was to pursue it to the end.

If it was a dream, then Reed would just have to make due when he woke up a brain in a tank tomorrow morning, and if it wasn't, if this was real, then he had damn sure better make use of it for all he was worth. "From the view point of Reed Richards, a man in love with you, it makes me want to do whatever the hell I can to please you, to treat you the way you've disserved to be treated for so long, to give what you wanted so badly, and I so badly wanted to give you in turn. Now then, why don't we head for your room, you're right, I've done enough thinking about technical matters for one day."

Susan used her temporarily greater height to easily overshadow Reed as she looked down at him. "Why bother going to my room? Why don't you just close that door, after all your lab is everything we'll need: clean, familiar to both of us, even if you a bit more then me, and it certainly is private."

Reed couldn't help but think of one obvious flaw with that plan, however appealing it was on the whole. "While my lab may be all those things, it is also manifestly lacking when it comes to one important feature, a bed. However delightfully spontaneous tonight is turning out to be, I can't imagine either of us would much enjoy the prospect of doing it on the floor."

Susan pulled her body back to normal, her eyes sparkling with barley suppressed lust. "Well, how do you feel about the prospect of us doing it on me?" "On you?" Susan evidently decided that Reed might understand her suggestion a little better if she provided him with a vissual aid. She sighed, and then spread out her arms and fell backwards. As she did, her body from her hips to a couple inches below her breasts lengthened and stretched out, until it had become fairly decent facsimile of a bed.

"On me." Reed nodded very slowly as he became aware of another long forgotten bodily sensation, that of his manhood stiffening as desire flooded through his body. But even as he once again felt his emotions starting to grow more and more intense, Reed had always prided himself on thinking logically first, whatever the situation. "Are you still on the pill, or something along those lines?" Despite the fact that she had shifted a significant portion of body into a bed Susan still had no trouble at all stretching the still "normal looking" upper portion of it over to him. "Well, sorta." Reed sighed, that was not a word he enjoyed hearing, since all things considered 'sorta' could also be used to describe how effective their ship's shielding had been at keeping cosmic rays on the outside. "Which means what exactly?"

Susan let loose with her own dramatic sigh. "I kept taking it after I got my powers, but then I couldn't help but notice that I'd stopped having my period. At first I thought it had just been thrown off by getting my body pumped full of cosmic rays, but I haven't menstruated once since I got my powers. So maybe you were right, even if you were rather tactless when you said I was more amoeba them woman. Which means I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to have your children..."

Reed motioned for Susan to come a little closer and pressed his bare right hand against her outstretched midsection, it more corresponded to where her stomach would have been then where her womb was (that was part of the bed unless he missed his guess) though it would serve his purposes well enough. "Susan, I'm a genius, if that turns out to be a problem we'll find a solution for it when the time comes. We haven't been able to be intimate with each other in any sense of the word for too long, so right now, all I want to do is just touch you all over." Susan reverted her body to normal and quickly began to disrobe while Reed began to take off his armor, a somewhat more complicated process.

Once they had gotten as undressed as they felt like being, Susan was left in a bra and pair of panties that were also made out of unstable molecules, and Reed was wearing what could best be described as a metal codpiece. "So Reed, if you don't mind me asking, I'll just rehash the question that women have probably been pondering since the dawn of time, compensation or representation?"

Reed of course already knew the answer. "Why don't you tell me?" Reed undid the last few necessary buckles and let the woman he loved have a good view of his new manhood. Susan giggled happily at the sight of it. "And representation it is! Would you consider it sexist of me if I all of a sudden I have a much easier time understanding why Victor was so full of himself?"

"Not if you'll agree to giving me a table so that I can give you a back massage." Susan just smiled. "I don't see how a girl can refuse an offer like that..." Once again she closed her eyes and fell but this time it was forwards. Her belly spread out like an airbag before impact, and fairly soon she was laying face down on it like a giant beanbag chair.

Reed easily positioned himself on top of Susan, who cooed approvingly as she felt his still erect manhood rub against her bare back. Then he slowly pressed his hands against her shoulders. There was a strange dichotomy to Susan's body, he was sure that he could feel tensed muscle beneath his fingers, yet no sooner did he start to apply pressure to it, then he felt it fall away, reshaping itself to fit whatever pressure was put on it.

While Reed was pondering this, Susan moaned approvingly and much to Reed's surprise she twisted her neck around a full 180 degrees, allowing her to look him in the eyes despite their position. "That's the spot right their, keep going, I can practically feel the stress rubbing right off me..." Reed felt Susan's shoulders start to "melt" underneath his hands sliding free from his grip leaving Susan with an outstretched neck to go with all of the other oddities of her current appearance.

Feeling more confident by the moment Reed slowly began to lift Susan's bra upwards exposing her breasts. "Well I'm glad to be of service." To Reed's surprise just like her shoulders, as he playfully massaged Susan's breasts they two vanished into the recesses of her body. Susan evidently felt it as well, and took it as some kind of internal signal.

"I think that's enough foreplay for both of us. Reed I've been dreaming about this for months, I only hope it's as good as I think it will be. But be warned, I was lying slightly when I said I'd be our bed." Susan's arms encircled Reed pinning him playfully to her back, and then somehow her entire body position flip flopped.

There was no other way to describe it, as one moment he was lying on her back with her face down, (or at least her head should have been faced down) the next he was laying on her outstretched belly with her face up. Then with a quick twist it was her midsection wrapped around him, which freed her arms to shoot up towards the ceiling where they grabbed hold of some of the support beams. Twisting his head (at least as much as he could) Reed saw that her legs were doing the same thing. Then her four outstretched appendages began to retract, lifting the two into the air.

Susan just smiled at the surprised look on Reed's face and adjusted the grip a little so that instead of a full on arms pressed to his sides hug it was simply a careful extension of her midsection that was wrapped around his like some kind of harness. "One of the first things I realzied once I got a grip on my powers, was that just how much fun they could make sex.

Since I know how much you like science, I figured that there's nothing you appreciate more then a little creative experiment in physics. Even as we speak I'm arranging myself so that our parts line up, you can thrust yourself down on me, or grab my arms and yank on them, pulling me up on you. Though of course with that belt around you and as these are my arms I can also do either myself if you want me to get things started. What do you think?"

Reed carefully felt out the band of Susan's midsection that encircled his own. "I am quite impressed at your imagination, but would you mind throwing a knot or two into this just for my safe keeping? The last thing either of us want to have happen is for me to get you 'too relaxed' causing you to lose your grip on me." Susan just laughed for a while before she finally communicated with actual words again. "Reed, I realize you don't have the best frame of reference at the moment, but we're actually all of five feet off the ground.

But seeing as there's nothing like having a younger brother to teach someone just how even a short fall can have extremely unpleasant results, I'll throw in a pair of knotted loops around your legs. Reed quickly felt Susan do just that. "Now then, why don't we get to work and find out just out much fun friction can be?"

Reed nodded, reached out grabbed Susan's arms, and thrust down will pulling up at the same time, her pussy shaping itself around his member as it never had before, massaging it from all sides even as he was busy making love to her. It didn't matter if Susan could stretch her face, she couldn't have possibly smiled wider then Reed did at that moment.

--

To Reed's surprise and horror when he first woke up he found that he couldn't move his body, maybe it had all been just another dream, an extremely delightful dream. Then he opened his eyes, and found himself looking at a face full of pink. He just staired at it for a few moments, and eventually he finally managed to come to the extremely obvious logical conclusion, if he had eyes to open, then he wasn't just a brain any more.

"Susan?" He felt the folds of pink encircling him slowly coming to life, and their ripples sent a few more quick spasms of pleasure through his body, reminding him just what he'd been doing last night. Not to mention how exactly and the number of times he'd done it. Apparently in addition to its primary "talent" Victor's body also had somewhat better endurance then his old one had possessed, which was just one more pleasant surprise he and Susan had discovered last night.

"Morning dream lover..." Susan kissed Reed deeply on the lips, and the pain of having something press against the burnt skin of his face made him recoil slightly, something he apoligized for at once. "Sorry Susan, it's just..." Susan cut him off as he felt her slowly sculpting her body back to its normal form. "Yeah I know, I'm sorry, until you get your face fixed or whatever I'll just have to find some way of showing how much I love you that doesn't involve touching your face. How can I possibly do that?" Of course the last question was asked with only mock confusion, since she even as she had been asking it, other parts of her body were working on pleasuring Reed with some 'hits' below the belt that he didn't find objectionable in the least.

"I think you just might be on the right track, though all things considered it seemed like you did most of the work last night, so if anyone disserves praise for their performance in, and as the bed it's you." Susan smiled and finally pulled herself away from Reed resuming her fully human form. "Well technically it was the hammock, and like I said before, whatever I do, I don't get tired, so I might as well make the best of it. I mean given that getting a leg up behind my head about as easily as most people can flex their fingers, it's not like I couldn't have gotten myself off on my own, it's just, it's not even the sex that really mattered, just being able to feel my skin rub up against that of the man I love makes me feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

Tell you what, if you use a psychic command to open up the door again, I'll go take care of making us both breakfast!" Reed had been trying to work out exactly where all the pieces of his armor currently were, but Susan's words brought a much more important matter to the forefront of his mind. "Far be it for me to tell you what to do, but you might want to get dressed first." Susan looked down a her naked body and evidently well and truly realized that she was undressed for the first time since waking up. "Oh, thanks for pointing that out to me Reed, I really would be lost without you. By the way, considered that the fact that you once again are in possession of a body, you might want to consider change your 'code name' to something more appropriate then Big Brain?"

"The idea had crossed my mind, but I'd decided that there were more important things to take care of then trying to figure out a new codename, why do you have a suggestion?" Susan stretched out her arms, grabbing her bra with one hand, and her panties with the other. "How does 'Mr. Fantastic' sound? You can work on pondering that while I go take care of making sure you get some food in you, even if I have to prechew it first."

Propriety made Reed wait until Susan was fully dressed before he opened the door, and by the time she got back with a several plates of food and cups somehow perfectly balanced by her elastic body, Reed had an answer for her. "Mr. Fantastic, I like the sound of it. You've really been on a roll recently, haven't you Sue?" Susan just smiled as she carefully adjusted her body turning the lower half of it into a table and resting the food and drink upon it. "Well when a girl has the power to turn herself into a ball, that sounds like a perfectly natural progression to me."

--

As the two lovers shared a meal together for the first time in far too long, little did Susan Storm or Reed Richards suspect the real reason for Susan's lack of menstruation. Her elastic body had indeed had an effect upon it, it had determined that it was a pointless process (without ever asking how Susan felt on the issue) and so taken steps to rectify it.

Now every month when an unfertilized egg went down her fallopian tube, and entered her womb, the walls of her womb stretched out slightly to snag the egg and encircle it. It was held there until the body felt that it would be necessary to let it go. Which obviously enough would be when Susan wanted children (subconsciously at the very least) and there was sperm nearby that could fertilize it. It had been about half a year since she'd gained her powers, and she had never been more sure that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Reed Richards, whatever body he occupied. What happened next simple enough to figure out, as Reed's sperm flowed into her womb, it relaxed and released the six eggs it had been saving for just such an occasion.

Considering that sperm usually had to at the very least split up so as to travel up both fallopian tubes, this was the reproductive equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. As Susan and Reed relaxed calmly, neither of them had a single clue or suspicion that not only was Susan pregnant, six newly fertilized eggs began to divide and grow within her.

AN: And thus ends the first chapter. Since Reed's elasticity seems much instinctive and require less concentration then Susan's invisible forecfields most fics I've seen them in have him calling the shots and setting the pace between them in bed, and I thought it might be interesting to see what would happen between them if the reverse was true.

In the chapters that will follow this one we'll see much more of this universe version of Ben and Johnny though the focus will remain pretty solidly on Reed and Susan as they deal with trying to balance their new relationship, their new bodies and of course the saving the day when the situation calls for it.

First fic posted here, so if you bothered to read through it all I would deeply enjoy comments/reviews, sorry once again for any errors I missed.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two: Nostalgia, in which Susan Storm hopes for a quite day and gets anything but.

It is an extremely odd sensation to wake up to the sound of someone else vomiting. Waking up with only part of someone in bed with you and the rest somewhere else entirely is another odd one. The two put together made for a VERY odd situation, but Reed Richards just sighed as he examined his current environment. It had been a month since he had once again found himself in possession of a body, and his and Susan's relationship was the best it had ever been.

The condition that she had left her body in said everything of importance on the issue after all. While her neck and head was busy vomiting in the bathroom attached to the room that had once been Susan's alone (but was now the two more or less shared) the rest of her body lay in bed with the covers pulled up only to her belly button, covering just as much of her body as they did of his.

He was warmed by the sight of her bared breasts in a way that had nothing (or at least very little) to do with lust. He had seen Susan's perfect breasts in a considerable number of different shapes and sizes, always remaining perfect no matter how she changed them, but the truth be told he enjoyed them the most in their current form, unchanged by her powers. After all, those were the breasts that he had fallen in love with back when they'd fallen in love.

Well maybe they were a bit bigger, but change was a universal constant. He valued the trust that she was showing him by leaving her bosom exposed much more then any cheep erotic thrill gained from the sight of something that he'd seen several times before, and he smiled as he casually pulled the covers up over them. Eventually Susan finished retching and Reed heard her flush the toilet, turn on the faucet, rinse and spit a few times, at which point her neck and head rejoined him in bed. Which was Reed's chance to voice his thoughts on what he'd just seen and heard.

"If you don't mind me asking, since I'm pretty sure your hands stayed in here, how did you flush and work the faucets?" Susan laughed openly at his boundless curiosity before lengthening a certain part of her body again slightly. "I used my neck. I'd be only too pleased to give you a demonstration if you want." Reed shook his head, he was more concerned about other aspects of his lover's body. "You realize that's the second time in four days that you've had trouble digesting a meal, and you've seemed to be a little tired lately, are you sure you aren't coming down with something?"

Of course "a little tired' was a phrase that could be interpreted in many different ways. Susan had doubtlessly picked up more energy as part of her powers, that Reed had noticed quickly. It wasn't so much that she was literally bouncing off the walls, it was just that like she had said herself, she never got tired. So in this case, what Reed was talking about wasn't so much a sudden drop in Susan's energy at any particular time, but instead her overall energy was a little lower during the past few days.

Granted the two had more or less been going at it like rabbits over the course of the last month, (they had half a year of lost time to make up for) and that kind of thing was probably capable of making anyone feel a little under the weather. It had certainly left Reed with less energy to work on his inventions. As he somewhat expected, Susan put on a brave face stretching her entire body out slightly as she spoke, like a cat puffing up its fur to appear bigger.

"Coming down with something? Please, that was nothing but a lesson I should have learned a long time ago about why calling in take out is preferable to sampling my brother's attempts at cooking. I haven't gotten sick for one single day since I first got my powers. Probably because I don't taste very good to viruses or bacteria any more now that I'm the amazing Amoeba Girl!"

Reed sighed, Susan had for the most part forgiven him for his particular comment on the closest he could come to scientific explanation for her powers, but it was also remarkably clear that she had no intentions of ever forgetting it. "And I hate to warn you, but I'm sure someone as smart as you knows how amoebas eat, and after throwing out last nights dinner I'm starting to feel a little empty."

Another thing that Reed had learned to adjust to over the last month was that in the bedroom, Susan was in charge. It wasn't that hard a change to adjust to, being a conscientious man he'd grown up firmly believing that you only had sex with a woman when she wanted to. It was just that Susan with that previously noted boundless energy evidently felt like she wanted to quite frequently.

Of course she understood the importance of letting him concentrate while he was working in his lab, and that they still had to use their powers to protect the common man, but that didn't stop her from liking to fall asleep every night after several vigorous rounds of love making, and quite frequently start every day with a brisk bout of intercourse, which usually (as it was today) took place before he could even get his feet on the floor.

Granted there were many worse fates to suffer in life then finding oneself having just a bit more sex then you wanted with the beautiful woman you loved who was constantly coming up with new ways to please you. Being a disembodied brain came to mind fairly quickly for one. Of course in this particular situation Reed knew just what 'position' they'd be doing it in. It was the one Susan had playfully (and in all fairness appropriately) named "above, below, inside, outside."

It worked fairly simply, like a giant pink amoeba Susan oozed over Reed, completely covering his body with her own, and then as he began to thrust into her, she began to teasingly massage various parts of his own body both to make sure he enjoyed the experience and to help him keep himself erect for as long as possible. Eventually when Reed finally couldn't take it any longer, Susan pulled away from him, not a single drop of sweat on her face. But at the risk of rehashing the same point over and over again, it was quite possible that her body simply didn't work that way any more.

"Thanks Reed, there's nothing like a little sex to get a girl up in the morning and ready to face the day ahead of her. You just keep the bed warm and I'll go make us a real meal that we can both enjoy going down and not have to worry about coming back up."

While Reed was supposedly the brains of the pair, it was Susan who had discovered how to put her pants on two legs at a time. Rather then taking a more conventional approach she dressed herself by slithering across the floor, and simply sliding into her discarded garments, leaving Reed alone on the bed panting his way towards getting his breath back. By the time he had accomplished that feat he was alone in the room, which left him free to worry about Susan.

Another side effect of his psychic powers was that his empathy had been drastically increased from what it had once been. And at the moment he could tell that whatever Susan's actions, deep down she was feeling unhappy and Reed had a pretty fair guess why.

It wasn't like he was intending to read her thoughts, it was just that with their bodies so frequently intertwined, the minds had a bad habit of ending up that way as well, weather or not Susan knew it, though Reed expected she didn't have the slightest clue. They tended to be breif flashes, and given the fact that they also tended to happen when she was climaxing, the results tended to be rather disorienting if taken individually.

However put together, and thought over by someone with Reed's intellect, he had at least an inkling of what might be getting to her. The two had once again regained their sense of physical intimacy, but that was all. Aside from the sexual activities and time spent as members of the Fantastic Four they weren't spending that much time together, and the Susan Storm that Reed remembered wouldn't have been far from fully satisfied by a purely physical relationship, however good it was. Luckily Reed had been working on a few things that might help them improve the other areas of their relationship, so it was with a cheerful "by the way Susan, after breakfast, I have some things I want to show you in the lab" that he greeted her when she returned with breakfast.

--

Susan wasn't exactly impressed with what Reed had to show her. "It looks like a pair of backpacks, and a prop from a spy movie..." "Well you're half right." Susan couldn't help, but feel her lip twitch slightly, being half right at guessing the purposes of Reed's invention was pretty far above par for her.

"Well what's so impressive about them?" Reed smiled as he picked up the thing that looked like something a secret agent would wear while trying to either conceal their identity, or pass on someone else. He slipped it on over his face, pressed it down firmly and then with the mask's lips, (which apparently perfectly followed the actions of the face behind it) smiled. "What do you think?"

Like most of his creations it was quite impressive. The mask did a perfect job of covering his face, and Susan' couldn't pick out where the mask ended and Reed's real flesh began. The face itself didn't really stand out, it wasn't Reed's as she remember it, but it wasn't covered wit burnt flesh either. "I'd have an easier time telling you what I thought if I knew what exactly it was for."

Reed sighed and walked over to the backpacks and unzipped them revealing the rest of his armor crammed into them, not to mention a copy of Susan's unstable molecule outfit. "Well I designed this synthetic facemask so that for the first time in quite a while I'd be able to actually blend into a crowd. I figured that if I wore it and we each carried one of these backpacks that we'd both be more or less fully ready if something went wrong, and yet not make it too obvious who we really are.

Susan could understand how that was suppose to work, but why was another matter altogether. "Isn't it kind of pointless to start worrying about secret identities and going unnoticed in public now, seven months after we told the entire world who we are and where we live?"

Reed shrugged as he hefted one of the backpacks onto his shoulders. "I wasn't so much thinking of secret identities, just not broadcasting who we are to the world at large every time we set foot outside the building. As I see it, we're like baseball players..." A slow smile began to creep up Susan's face, when Reed brought sports into his metaphors there was always the possibility that he'd show of just how stupid one of the smartest people on earth could be.

"When there is a 'game' going on, we're expected to show up. But when there isn't, just because we're celebrities doesn't mean that we have to be in the public eye every single time we go out outside our own home. This way we could go out together and do things that a normal couple would do instead of worry about saving the world. It'd only be a lie of omission at the most, and we'd finally be able to spend some time together the way we used to before we got our powers. What do you think?"

Susan had to admit that it didn't make much sense that they'd have to choose between spending all their time cooped up in the Baxter Building, or dealing with their adoring (but sometimes infuriating) public outside it. Why not at the very least give it a try, what was there to loose after all?

"So what exactly did you have in mind us doing to test out if we can manage to fly under the public radar?" Reed shrugged. "I've got no idea frankly, I figured I'd just offer you the opportunity and if anything in particular perked your interest we could give it a try." Very slowly a smile came to Susan's lips. "Really? Well I've got an idea for something that might be fun to do together, besides the obvious of course."

--

"So what do you think of this one Reed?" Susan strutted back and forth in the flowing blue dress she was currently trying out. "I think it looks beautiful on you Sue, but then I've yet to see you try on anything that you haven't looked wonderful in. So I suppose you'll just have to decide for yourself if that's a compliment to your physical beauty our your eye for fashion." Susan stopped strutting and favored Reed with a smile. "Personally I think it is both, but then I am a little biased in my favor."

Of course what Reed left unsaid was that Susan had been taking advantage of her powers to alter her body to suit each individual outfit. Nothing too striking, just a little bit more of this or a little bit less of that, so as to best fill out each of the many outfits that had caught her eye. That in combination with her recently discovered ability to stretch and shape her hair like the rest of her body, Susan had evidently decided to make up for lost time by having a different hairstyle every time she came out of the dressing room.

Luckily, so far no one but Reed had been keeping a close enough eye on her to notice. "Well all things considered I'm hardly an impartial observer either." Susan tittered slightly at Reed's simple observation of the truth, and before he knew it Reed was suddenly in the middle of another conversation entirely. /Hey Reed, you can still hear me right?\ The good thing about having psychic connection with his three teamates was that not only could he contact them, from a considerable distance, but they could return the favor.

Of course when it happened this way, having your sixth sense suddenly take precedence over your other five without warning, it was not only a little unsettling, but tended to cause his body to zone out and go limp for a few seconds. Luckily this was a situation where he could afford to suffer that side effect without any major repercussions. If he'd been driving a car a the time, well hopefully Susan would instinctively stretch her arms over and take the wheel. /I can hear you just fine Johnny. What is it?\

The ability to distinguish his three teamates from one another by their mental 'voices' had come to him fairly quickly, and unlike a great many of his other abilities it hadn't left him after he'd gotten a body. /I know you and my sister are suppose to be having a day on the town together, but there is something I just saw on TV that you two should probably know about.\

Reed sighed, like he had said to Susan, when there was a 'game' going on they needed to show up. /What is it?\ /Some guy just climbed up on top of a bridge, and for the last few minutes he's just been standing there evidently thinking about jumping off. I know it's not exactly up there with an alien invasion, but we do take care of stuff like this right? Oh and considering the spectacle he's making of himself you shouldn't have much trouble finding the place once you go outside.\

Reed accidentally nodded, in a gesture that Johnny couldn't see, and Susan couldn't see the cause of. /Of course we do. You take care of telling Ben, I'll inform Susan. Just think really hard about me if anything else important pops up.\ Then Reed cut the psychic connection and after rolling his tongue around in his mouth for a few moments getting used to controlling his body, he was just about ready to speak (confident that his words wouldn't come out a jumbled mess) when Susan cut him off. "Our afternoon just became officially shot didn't it? Damn, and there were at least half a dozen other outfits I wanted to show you..."

"How did you know?" Susan looked down a the dress she was wearing, then over at the blue backpack that held the top and bottom parts of her uniform. "I can always tell when your chatting with someone mind to mind by the way your eyes become unfocused. I'm guessing by the fact that your not already rushing me out of the store it's something that falls between the severity of a cat struck in a tree, and evil monsters are suddenly popping out of the ground again.

But since that obviously is a pretty wide category, why don't you explain it to me while I slip into something more appropriate for the situation?" Reed managed to heft and toss the blue backpack to Susan who at once got down on her knees, unzipped the necessary flap and began to pour herself into it and out of her dress. Of course since she was still wearing her unstable molecule bra and panties underneath the dress all Reed ended up seeing was a certain amount of her pink flesh, granted on the other hand it wasn't like there was anything "new" he could really hope to see.

By the time he had finished explaining it to what would seem like an empty room the 'transformation' was complete and while Susan Storm had slithered into the backpack, Ultra Woman emerged from it, her hair returned to the style that had been her mainstay for over half a year. "So in short Susan, you might as well go without me since you and Ben's powers would be most useful for dealing with the situation. I can probably take care of making sure that the outfits you like are still here when you get back."

Susan responded by elongating her right leg and using it push the blue dress she had been wearing back under the door of the dressing room she'd been making use of. Then she stretched out her arms, grabbing the two backpacks, before wrapping her elongated midsection around Reed's body. "While I admit I'll probably end up doing the lionesses share of the work, I might as well bring you along anyway since it can't really hurt.

Besides, this way if something goes horribly wrong, I won't have to worry about telling it to you before you can tell it to the others, and if things go the way they should, then you can at least watch how we do our jobs with your own two eyes for once." Reed decided that struggling would be nothing but a waste of time and energy, not to mention Susan did have a good point about the advantages of actually seeing things unfold up close and personal.

Of course no sooner had Susan stopped talking to Reed then she had begun to increase the length of her body, which lead to her stretching more or less right through the center of the store like a giant azure serpent, a sight that understandably raised a couple eyebrows. She stopped for only a moment near by the checkout aisle easily zigg zagging past several people who were standing in line. and turning her head to face the extremely startled casher. "Why yes I really am Susan Storm also known as Ultra Woman of the Fantastic Four, and I'd love to stay and chat but I have some superheroing to be doing so if you could make sure that the outfits I picked out for myself in the fifth dressing room are still there when I get back you'd be doing me a huge favor, thanks!"

Then before waiting for any kind of coherent response (it might have been quite a long wait after all) she was out the door (luckily someone else happened to be entering at the time so the dilemma of how to deal with the fact that said doors were pressure activated never raised its ugly head) and quickly headed up towards the top of the building. Only after she'd managed to curl her body up over the side of the side of the roof did she finally paused for a moment to let the rest of her body catch up.

"So are you going to wait while I put on my armor, or should I show up looking completely unprofessional?" Susan slung the two backpacks over her back and readjusted her body, this time gripping Reed with an arm. "Neither, just stay still and I should be able to help you get it on without too much trouble." Susan began to elongate her arms and legs giving her an incredibly gangly figure that clearly shouldn't have been able to support itself as well as it did.

With such long legs she had no trouble at all bridging the gap between one building's roof and the next, which let her to cover ground at a very impressive speed without needing worrying about accidentally stepping on someone. Then she used the hand that wasn't wrapped around Reed to reach back grab a part of his armor from one of the backpacks and either just pass it back to him or actively help him get it on, depending upon what the situation called for.

By the time they were approaching the right bridge (the sheer number of onlookers, not to mention officials made it hard to miss) Susan had a large smile on her face as she passed Reed his boots. "Heh, this is kind of fun, just like playing with my dolls as a girl."

Reed looked up a Susan's face which was normal sized still a noticeable distance form his. "I don't suppose you could have found a less demeaning way to say that?" Susan just shrugged her tremendous shoulders. "Hey, if the fact that your a famous super rich genius who helps save the city, nation, and or world from several threats that the normal authorities were helpless against, not to mention well hung and great in bed, isn't enough to give you a solid sense of self worth then I'm afraid that's your problem, not mine.

Luckily she spoke those words in a normal tone of voice, so only Reed heard them, and with one last step they came down next an important looking police officer who was holding a bullhorn rather haphazardly. No sooner had his boots touched the ground then Reed spoke up. "We were in the neighbourhood and heard that you were having some trouble, anything we can do to help?"

The police officer just looked at them askance for a few moments before glancing up a the man who was still slowly lifting then lowering his left leg before doing the same with his right on top of the bridge. The officer's malaise was understandable, the Fantastic Four had never set out to try and be vigilantes who took care of mundane criminals who in a perfect world the police would always be on top of.

Rather Reed had realized that if they'd been able to somehow go from ordinary humans to something much more, then sooner or later other people would find ways to as well (if they already hadn't) and that people should be able to count on having someone to protect their lives, possessions, and planet from those even the most thoroughly trained and equipped of ordinary humans just weren't powerful enough to handle.

"Considering that he's more or less shut down traffic on this bridge if you could get him down here so that we can get things moving again it'd certainly make my life a lot easier." Reed turned towards Susan and motioned with an armored gauntlet up towards the top of the bridge and the individual who stood there. "Think you can handle this Ultra Woman?" "I'll give it my best shot." She was kind enough to only mentally winked at him before she started stretching again.

--

Susan practically hummed to herself as she worked her way up towards the top of the bridge, occasionally wrapping her extended midsection around a nearby part of its metal frame whenever she was staring to feel a little over extended.

This was going to be cake, even if the guy decided to jump before she made it up to him all she would have to do is grab him and form a parachute to slow him down, or a trampoline below him, or a protective sphere around him, when you could stretch your body any way you wanted, the plans you came up with were naturally rather flexible. It was as she made it three quarters of the way up the bridge that it happened.

All of a sudden she felt some strange sort of internal pressure. Her body evidently afraid it would tear itself in half, suddenly began to instantly pull itself back tougher sending her upper torso straight back towards her legs and the ground, undoing everything she'd managed to achieve. Just about everyone let out a gasp of surprise at her sudden decent, the ease with which she'd moved upwards had probably been the first ray of hope cast upon this situation.

Reed didn't quite put a hand on her shoulder, but she could tell from the look in his eyes that he wanted to. "Is it too far?" He asked the question in a low tone of voice probably wanting to make sure as few people heard it as possible. Susan responded loudly and confidently as she looked upwards again, whatever had just happened shouldn't have, she'd stretched herself way higher, way further then what she'd just achieved before it had been suddenly yanked away from her.

She refused to let that case of stage fright, or whatever it was, make her look like a complete and total fool in front of Reed, not to mention everyone else who was present. "It's okay folks, just made the classic climbers mistake of accidentally looking down." She tried to laugh it off since it was better they be laughing with her than at her, then after rubbing her hands together took another shot at it.

Her body didn't want to be stretched that far, fine, she could still make this work. This time going up Susan repeatedly wrapped herself around the support structure the lead up to the top of the bridge again and again and again, pulling the back half of body along almost as quickly as her front half moved upwards. That way she would never get any where near as stretched out as she had been the first time around.

Of course it took longer to move that way, and she was only about halfway up when a sudden grasp from the crowd told her that she'd run out of time to do this the easy way. Susan looked upwards saw the quickly plummeting body, and twisted her own into the best spring she could manage in her precarious situation before launched herself onwards. Just which of many plans she would follow quickly flowing through her head: warp herself tight around the guy, then shape herself as a parachute to slow him down, if necessary grab hold of something and use it to manuever themselves so they'd land in the water rather then on the bridge.

That would give her plenty of time to calm the jumper down, and Susan would only need to keep herself and the guy afloat (easy when you could rather drastically increase your body's surface area) long enough to grab hold of something and pull both of them to solid ground.

Sadly the moment she'd finished thinking that plan out something went wrong with it, before her target reached the point where she was planning to grab him someone else got there first. Benjamin Grimm the Dragonfly wrapped his arms tightly around the man and leveled off his dive, his mighty wings beating as fast as they could to slow their decent. Thankfully the pair managed to achieve a near perfect landing.

Susan for her part stretched out her arms, grabbed hold of the section of the bridge she had been working her way up, and once again wrapping her body firmly around it. In theory she should have been able to move down it much faster then she did up, but as Reed would say, theory and reality where two very different things. She started to sluggishly made her way down, unable to take much solace from the fact that the jumper was perfectly safe.

She had been sure that this would be a walk in the park, and then she had gone and messed it up royally. By the time she had finally made her way back down to the ground, moving with all the energy and speed of a drop of honey, the jumper had already been dealt with and Ben had taken off again.

The police were taking care of getting thing moving again, but of course the news reporters saw no reason to depart when they already had another good story waiting for them right where they were. As she neared the ground she could see and hear them clustering around Reed with question. "So, Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards, Dr. Richards, which do you prefer by the way?"

"I'm fine with either of the first two, but I'd prefer the third only be used in situations where I'm speaking from a doctor's perspective." Of course the Fantastic Four had been quick to issue a press release about Reed's new name and body after he'd acquired them so the reporter's weren't taken aback by the armored figure who stood before them. "All right then Mr. Fantastic, as a whole the Fantastic Four has been surprisingly open about themselves, however despite being told that you were a member of the team no one saw you during those first few months. Since everyone knows that you're really Reed Richards and exactly where you live, why the mask?"

As Susan's feet touched the ground, she had to admit that at least it was a reasonable question. The down side to being a celebrity superhero with no secret identity was that you had to be a lot more careful about your public relations. But at least so far even the most zealous reporters understood the importance of keeping their distance and not badgering members of the team while they were actively working.

"The reason I wasn't seen during the first few months is simple, I wasn't there to be seen. As I'm sure you might remember, I was nothing but a living brain who assisted the team by helping the other three coordinate their actions and exploit weakness I saw in their opponents. As for the mask, there are two reasons. The first is that as I mentioned in our latest press release, this isn't even my own body, I wound up with it more or less accidentally, and though it is in fine working order aesthetically it leaves a considerable amount to be desired. So instead of inflicting the sight of it upon the public I wear this mask.

The second is simple logic, it doesn't make much sense to cover the rest of my body in protective armor and yet leave the face exposed does it?" Since none of the reporters could find a good follow, up question to Reed's answers, they turned to Susan instead. "Ultra Woman, are you having trouble with your powers?" Susan sighed then shook her head elongating her neck to add emphasis to the effect. "No, today was jus apparently an off day for me.

Besides, that's why the Fantastic Four are a team, there are plenty of things that we can't do on our own, and nothing we can't do together. I was fairly sure I could have grabbed that guy as he was falling, but Dragonfly got there first and took care of it, and that's fine with me. So long as somebody got the job done I couldn't really care less who it was, a win is a win and a loss is a loss, no mater who is MVP of the game."

Then came the question she knew was coming and had been dreading. "Susan Storm and Reed Richards were in a reasonably committed relationship before the forming of the Fantastic Four. Yet afterwards, there were rumors of a growing romance between you and Ben Grimm, where does your relationship with Mr. Fantastic stand at the moment?" Susan pulled her neck back onto her shoulders and sighed again.

"I'll be the first to admit that being a superhero, especially a celebrity/superhero has a way of complicating every aspect of your life. As for my relationship with Ben, he was and still is a fine friend of Reed's and a friend of mine. He's an important member of the team, but my relationship with him is and always was entirely plutonic. As for my relationship with Reed, before the crash I was fairly certain that we things were getting serious between us.

After he lost his body that more or less ground our relationship to a halt, and now that he's got one back, even if is a different one then he started with, we're working together and seeing exactly what will and what won't fit into our new lifestyle." Sure enough the reporters turned right back to Reed at that point. "What do you have to say on the issue of your relationship with Ultra Woman?"

Susan suspected that Reed was probably starting to sweat beneath his mask, he wasn't as used to this kind of thing as she was (in retrospect it'd been foolish teaching him to be ready to face bullets but not questions, since their occupation lead to plenty of both coming their way) and he'd always been the quite and studious type.

"Susan and I share reciprocated romantic feelings with one another. To tell the truth I was considering the possibility of upon a successful completion of our flight into and return from space, as an occasion upon which it might have been prudent to pop the question to her." Susan unexpectedly blushed, it would have been nice if he'd told her that before he announced it to the rest of the city on television!

"Afterwards just like she said, since I didn't have a body our relationship was more or less stuck in park. Now that I have one again, over the course of the last month we've been feeling things out between us. Being members of the Fantastic Four together is another layer on our relationship that we both have to keep in mind, it doesn't necessarily preclude romantic attachments, we just have to keep our occupations in mind.

After all, it would be a shame if something as simple as a lovers spat had the kind of far reaching effects that a quarrel among the members of the Fantastic Four could have. Do we love one another, of course, are we in love, yes. It's just at the moment we're still only starting to get used to the fact that we have superpowers and thus much more responsibility on our shoulders then we did at any other time in our lives.

Still as juvenile as it sounds, at the moment all I feel confident saying about our relationship is that Susan Storm is my girlfriend." "Before any of you even need to ask, yes Reed Richards is my boyfriend." Susan wondered if she really looked as stupid as she felt saying those words, and wondered just what page she could expect to see to see a story based on them to appear in tomorrow's newspaper.

At least Reed hadn't bothered to ask a third question about their relationship, where they making love? Because the answer to that question was a resounding, spring bouncing, bedpost notching, headboard banging, yes. It was strange how it was so very easy to be uninhibited with Reed when they were alone, and so very ashamed of every single thing she'd done the moment she thought about other people finding out.

"So can we expect wedding bells in your future.?" Reed turned away from the newsmen to face Susan. "That question is still up in the air at the moment, but I promise, we will be every bit as surprised when we find out the answer as you will be. Now then, if you'll excuse us now that the situation which originally brought us here has been dealt with, the two of us have other places to be. Susan?"

Susan wrapped an arm around Reed, (she was careful never to do the midsection wrap around in front of the press, she could just imagine how much fun they'd have with a good shot of Reed with his head located almost directly between her breasts) elongated her legs and then walked off, careful not to have her feet come down on top of anyone till she was able to once again get the two of them on top of a roof, at which point Reed gestured in the opposite direction.

"Susan, aren't we headed away from the store where you left all those outfits in?" Susan just sighed as she turned her gaze in the direction of the Baxter Building. "I don't feel much like shopping any more Reed, all of a sudden I just feel like lying down for a while. Don't worry though, I've still got enough spring in my step to us both home..."

--

Reed was glad that Susan lived up to her promise, though he never really doubted her. Not to say he wasn't worried about Susan in other ways. He'd hoped that their trip out together would leave her in good spirits, but all it had seemed to accomplish was move whatever internal dissatisfaction she might have been feeling outwards.

It was hard to believe that the woman who now extended and stretched her limbs with jerky and awkward movements was the same one who's frame had just this morning oh so lithely flowed around his own. Clearly she was in some kind of funk, and since Reed didn't have a dam clue about what he could say to bring her out of it, he just stayed quite.

When they finally did get back inside the Baxter Building the reception they got didn't help matters much. "Well if it isn't the two lovebirds..." Ben's wings flapped in irritation as he looked at the pair of them. "You know, the way things go around here a guy could get to thinking that he's the only one who actually remembers what we started this team to do in the first place."

Reed to a step forward to look Ben in the eye, Victor's body was taller then his old one so he managed it without needing to tilt his chin. "What are you talking about Ben?" Ben's wings began to flap up a storm as he spoke. "I mean that as far as the kid is concerned, this is all some kind of game, and now you two are getting all lovey dovey with each other, and I'm the only one who still thinks about saving peoples lives first, now why do you think that is?"

Before either of them could answer his question Ben did it himself. "I'll tell you why, because I'm the only one who doesn't have a choice about being the way he is. Right after the crash I thought we might all be freaks for good, but at least we could count on each other. Then Susy figured out how to walk around without having her legs being different lengths, Johnny learned how to turn his metal coating on and off like flicking a switch, and finally you got a body so you weren't just a brain any more. But what about me?

Every single night I still have to crawl into bed and go to sleep laying on my belly because otherwise my wings complain when I lie on them. If any of you three wanted to, you could go back to doing anything you'd like to and just pretend you didn't have superpowers, well not me. Luckily the one single thing these monstrosities are good for is making sure a guy can be alone when he wants to be.

So while I'm gone, why don't you think about this Reed, if you're so smart, how come you haven't found out a way to let me be as normal as you three are?" Then he calmly jumped out the same window that the other two had entered through and took off flying at once. Now apparently it was Reed's turn to have his confidence shaken today, and Susan looked down a her feet, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

"That was... different of him..." Reed nodded, it was the only thing he could do. "As I though I understood it, Ben was glad to have his wings. But he does raise a good point, having a pair of extra appendages probably seemed pretty insignificant next to my lacking an entire body. But now that I've got one, even considering my face, he is the most disfigured member of the team."

Susan watched him go and huffed slightly. "That's true, but it doesn't give him a reason to unload on you like that. He could have at least calmly put the problem to you and given you some time to work on it before he went ballistic." Of course that said, Reed had a feeling deep in his gut that being given some time to work on that particular task wouldn't make much difference, the only obvious way to separate Ben from his wings would be to cut them off, which would also be depriving him of his powers, none of the other three had to deal with problems like that.

He reached out with his mind for a moment and was shocked by what he found. "Susan, Ben's closed off his mind to me. If I tried hard enough I could probably force my way in, but he'd doubtlessly feel it, and I doubt he'd appreciate the effort. Could you do me the favor of keeping track of him and making sure he doesn't do anything rash?

I wouldn't normally be so suspicious, but as you pointed out that outburst was rather out of character for him, so I'm afraid he might end up committing actions that are equally disharmonious with his normal personality. I'd go myself, but I'm also probably the last person he wants to see right now, and you'd probably have an easier time both keeping up with him and doing so without being too obvious about it."

Reed didn't also mention that he had some upgrades in mind for his armor that he wanted to work on. Susan's entire body seemed to snap to attention, the depressed, almost drooping aura that had pervaded her every action since they had moved away from the bridge was gone, or at least momentarily pushed aside. "Sure thing Mr. Fantastic, you can count on me!" Reed couldn't help but note that the way Susan's body flowed through that open window was poetry in motion.

--

Across town a short bald man wearing a simple white outfit with an artists smock worn atop it looked up from his latest work to make sure that the door was closed and only then cackled silently to himself. Phillip Maser's soon to be known to the world at large (a world that worshiped and respected him as its unquestioned ruler) as the Puppet Master had never in his wildest dreams believed that it would be so easy.

It had been two simple lucky discoveries, first finding that special radioactive clay, and secondly the realization that if he made a perfect likeness of someone out of said clay, then he could use that likeness to control its living counterpart's actions. Move their limbs as he chose, put words in their mouths, in short play with them like puppets. Soon he would be ready, he was hard at work amassing his collection of puppets of the world's most powerful leaders, and when the time came they would one and all abdicate their power to him.

Of course there was the matter of enforcing his rule since it would be a frivolous waste of his time (not to mention his limited supply of clay) to carve and control a likeness of every single person who opposed him. Then the Fantastic Four had come onto the scene, and like every other member of the public they had sworn to protect he had rejoiced.

An entire quartet of superpowered humans who were foolish enough to show their faces in broad daylight! How easy it would be to subvert them to his will and use them to quash any who dared oppose him! Unfortunently as it turned out, the group had only a trios worth of fools. In his hands he held one puppet that of the winged human known as Dragonfly in the necessary drawer rested two more, the robotics Mandroid, and the elastic Ultra Woman.

The final member of this group Mr. Fantastic however, he seemed to have been created just to vex the Puppet Maser personally. The mask should have made no difference, it was after all ridiculously easy to use his powers to open the necessary channels to get access to fairly recent (in the sense of less then a year old) pictures of Reed Richards, but that had turned out to be nothing but a dead end.

He needed a puppet who's face resembled that of the body he wished to control, which meant that he needed a picture of this Victor Von Doom, a picture that did not exist, anywhere. The most recent ones were several years old and not one single person could seem to provide a solid accurate description of what that faced looked like after it had been horrendously scarred.

He had it all set too, the rest of the puppet from the neck down was carved, he needed only to know his adversaries face, and it eluded him still! He had been tempted to simply wait and bide his time, but though he could feel his puppets actions, he could not truly see through their eyes, and thus the only avenue likely to yield what he desired had been shut firmly in his face.

He had grown tired of waiting, tired of putting up with needing to play father to his blind step daughter Alica, tired of being denied the respect that should have rightfully been his, and so he had acted. The test with that fool who had been ready to end his own life upon the Puppet Master's command proved that he could make his puppets do anything, and that knowledge was sweet in his mouth.

Since he could not simply control his final foe, he had decided on another more subtiler plan of divide and conquer, even this very moment he knew that Dragonfly was winging his way here. Once he was properly restrained he could get to work summoning the other two he could control, and have them bring this unknown Mr. Fantastic to him as well!

--

Susan had discovered early on that as foolish as it sounded, if she cartoonishly stretched her eyes outward she could enhance her vision, at least temporarily. This trick was sufficient to let her keep track of Ben from street level where she was fairly sure that while she could see him, she'd be nothing but a blue dot to her. Of course she was also probably making quite a spectacle of herself, everyone could see she was doing important superhero business of so they left her alone.

It was odd, Susan had expected Ben to fly around in circles until he had calmed himself down, but instead he seemed to be headed for some particular destination. As Susan pulled her eyes back to normal and blinked them a couple times, she elongated her legs and took off, indeed her powers helped her not only keep track but also keep up with Ben's impressive pace.

Which was a good thing because Susan Storm was determined not to look the fool twice in one day. That was the down side to supeheroing, unless you were going to sink to the level of dealing with petty crooks (which not only should be the polices' job, but was hardly a challenge (Susan had discovered that not only was it impossible to harm her elastic body with bullets, but by carefully stretching she could sling them right back at the feet of whoever had fired them at her, a trick guaranteed to scare the living daylights out any run of the mill thug)) there tended to be long periods of nothingness between times the world needed saving that could either be very relaxing or very boring .

If you were rejoicing that the love of your life now once again had a body and an evil mastermind had been dealt with, then it was relaxing. If you were still smarting from how you'd messed up during your last stint in the public eye, then not only was it boring, but almost unbearably so. So while most likely no one's life was on the line this time around, Susan was still determined to fulfil the orders Reed had given her and show him she could do something right!

Then to her surprise, she saw the speck that was Ben start to loose altitude, she stretched out her eyes again and saw that he was going into a controlled dive, but it was still odd that he was going to land somewhere besides back at the Baxter Building. Stretching out her body even more Susan stared hustling to catch up to him as fast as she could. She just barely made it in time to see him hitting a buzzer and then being let into an ordinary looking two story home.

As he walked into the house he turned his head to look around, but by that point Susan's entire body was flat as a sheet of paper pressed against the alley she had stretched her neck out of. As the door closed, Susan quickly hurried over and was glad to see that the street was evidently disserted, it just wouldn't do for the public to see her doing some things, and flattening her body till she could slip through a door into someone's house was doubtlessly one of them.

She found herself in some kind of greeting room that was empty, but then she cold hear voices coming from another nearby closed door. She made her way over to the nearest wall and pressed her head against it, stretching out her ear. That trick let her increase her sense of hearing the same way stretching her eyes turned them into a pair of binoculars. "So you received my message?" Susan didn't recognize the voice and for some reason it made shiver's race up and down her body. "Yes I did, I came just like you told me to."

That was Ben's voice but it sounded strangely devoid of emotion. Suddenly there was the sound of someone entering the room and a female voice joined the conversation. "Stepfather, what's going on, are we having guests?" The male voice responded in sickening sweet tones. "Yes we are Alica, a very important guest, now won't you be a dear and make him feel welcome?"

Then the female voice that apparently belonged to someone named Alica said something that made Susan's heart jump into her throat "One guest stepfather?" I could swear that I can hear another one out in the hall waiting to be let in." Susan was tempted to bolt straight for the door and leave, but she steeled herself, at the very least she could wait till they where headed on their way before trying to escape.

"Nonsense my dear, you're imagining things. Now then, why don't you help me show my one guest the way to my workshop?" Susan breathed easier as she heard the sound of the three's footsteps growing fainter, and finally decided that she needed to learn just a little bit more before she left. Slowly and carefully she got down on the floor and stretched her neck over to the door, and saw through the crack in it that no one else was in the next room.

So she calmly stood up, swung the unlocked door open, and walked through it. But no sooner had she taken five steps into the room then a metal cover slammed down on top of the door and the room was filled with the sound of invisible hissing serpents. Susan deeply regretted that first gasp of surprise she took at this sight, because it alone was enough to make her head reel. Normally it'd be easy to slip under that door but apparently since one of the places the knockout gas was coming from was near by she'd doubtlessly end up inhaling more of the stuff then she could handle if she tried to escape that way.

That left her with only one choice, she began to inhale, shifting about the insides of her body trying to make sure the gas went anywhere it could possibly go besides its normal destination of her lungs. Susan managed to inhale load after load of the stuff like she was a human vacuums cleaner, though it began to leave its mark on her fairly quickly. First her stomach began to creep outwards, and though wasn't heavy, it certainly had the drum tightness frequently connected with the belly of someone who'd just eaten themselves to the very limit of what they could hold.

Then her legs began to get bigger and wobblier, swelling out until they touched one another. After that came her breasts, already they where each the size of soccer balls! Susan didn't despair as she kept on inhaling grateful that she hadn't forgotten or been unable to comprehend everything Reed had ever told her.

If she could just inhale enough of the gas to make her body ballooned out and cover up the places it was coming from, then the building up of pressure between her body pushing against the walls and the gas trying to push in would eventually cause an explosion somewhere, hopefully opening up several holes in this room which would give both her and the gas a way to escape. As she kept swallowing she felt her arms, then her hands, then her fingers swell up. As the process continuned she couldn't help but notice that her body seemed to be working is way towards a completely spherical Susan Storm.

Her belly grey out not only forwards but also backwards, downwards and upwards leading it to swallow her legs arms, breasts and neck in its quest to make more room for all the knockout gas Susan was pulling into herself, and yet tyring to keep away from her lungs. Then just as she felt her body solidly wedging itself into the corners of the room, she also felt the same sensation she'd had on the bridge, that internal something or other she couldn't name.

It might as well have been a punch to her gut, she coughed spluttered, and all the gas she'd sucked in slipped out of her saturating the room. Susan could do nothing more then lay where she finally landed after being sent flying halfway across the room like a balloon that had suddenly sprung a leak, and moan slightly as she sucked knockout gas in through her mouth and nose into her lungs where it did its diabolical work.

The last thing she saw before her eyes closed was an opaque glass capsule rising out of the middle of the floor, three figures that her mind was too foggy to even try to comprehend, safe from the gasses' effects behind the those glass walls. She hung her head in defeat and "so that's where they went..." was the last thought her mind was able to properly comprehend before it had no choice but to shut down.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Hello to anyone reading this. I'd deeply appreciate your comments and criticism since it's not like I'm writing this thing just for myself. Well okay I wouldn't be writing it if I didn't find enjoyable to read/write but if I was only interested in how I felt about it I wouldn't bother posting it. So I'd deeply appreciate it if you drop reviews after coming this far!

Swelling with love chapter three: Discoveries, in which Reed Richards is a genuine superhero and Susan Storm finds answers to questions she never even asked.

The Puppet Master smiled as he culched the small gray statue tightly, things were going well, in fact better then he had ever expected! Not only did he have Dragonfly firmly under his control, but now he had gotten rid of another member of the Fantastic Four in the bargain! It had taken him a few moments to figure out exactly how to deal with his uninvited guest, but he had found one.

Any sort of normal restraints would have proved utterly pointless when it came to trying to contain Ultra Woman's elastic body, but that problem was no sooner fully examined then resolved. At this very moment, she currently sat across the hall from him, bound to a stout chair by her own limbs.

Not to mention her arrival had presented him with a most intriguing opportunity. His blind and naively trusting step daughter dressed in the uniform of Dragonfly's companion and wearing an appropriate wig would not pass as Ultra Woman for long, but he was certain it would be long enough for his puppet to gain the upperhand over his teamates.

Before the day was out, the entire Fantastic Four would be his! Then, then it would be only a matter of time until the rest of the world was his as well! He roused himself from his revelry as his puppet felt the door to the inner sanctum of his team open before him.

That insolent blond haired boy was there, but at the moment he had not used his abilities to turn his skin to metal, how wonderful. He had his puppet turn slightly and extend his wings fully. Those same wings which were capable of keeping his body airborne packed more then enough punch to subdue a human with one good blow.

His step daughter was starting to fret in surprise, but it hardly mattered, he directed his puppet onwards. The boy was of no real concern, he already had a puppet of him should he need it. What mattered now was finding and dealing with Mr. Fantastic...

--

Reed Richards looked up from his work and smiled. He'd manage to integrate the concussion beam technology that Victor had used to subdue Ben when the team had been fighting to try and free Reed into the armor's gauntlets. He was actually rather proud of the way that he'd designed, the strength of the beam based was easy to control based around where he pressed his tongue against the armor's metal facemask.

Yes it was a little silly, but no one would see what exactly he was doing, and if you were going to turn something that looked like more or less medieval knight's armor into a machine that would let you defeat a battalion of tanks in open combat, you had to cut corners somewhere, better they be where in dignity than safety.

A loud wrapping sound made him turn his attention to the necessary monitor upon which he saw Ben knocking on the door to his lab. Odd, he'd been expecting Susan to return first, but then maybe not letting Ben see that she was following him meant that she made sure to trail behind him even when he was heading back to the Baxter Building.

"Don't worry Ben, I'll have it open in a minute." He walked over and pulled the necessary lever, psychic commands were still needed as to open the door up from the outside, but now at least he didn't have to give himself a brain cramp every time someone wanted to join him in his lab. The sound of moving machinery filled the room as the door opened and a moment later Ben walked in. "So what did you want to see me about?"

The only answer that Reed got was that Ben wings suddenly started flapping wildly as and he rose into air flying straight at him. He easily knocked Reed out of his chair and onto the floor, before wrapping his hands tightly around his best friend's neck in the process. For a few moments Reed tried to hold him off physically, but while his new body was more suited to the task than his old one, without his armor on he had no chance of overpowering Benjamin Grimm in unarmed combat

Rather then dwelling on the irony that just a few moments ago he had finished creating a device that would have done a perfect job of disabling without harming his suddenly murderous friend and now lay not ten feet away from him, Reed focused on what he could actually make use of, his mind.

Even as it was getting hard to breath, he reached out into Ben's mind, and found something incredibly odd going on inside. His mind was there, but it was as if there was some gray thing surrounding it, cutting it off from his body. Reed hurled his mental force at that gray thing trying to pierce it, but though it left a large dent it didn't break the barrier.

The grey thing started to shift about to cover over the dent, and Reed knew that if he failed with his next try he'd never be able to muster the concentration for a third. He carefully aimed and let fly with a mental arrow straight into Ben's mind.

It slammed through the gray barrier and the mind it had been restricting streamed out back into control of the body it resided inside, and with merciful speed the grip on his wind pipe loosened. "Reed? What the hell was I doing?" Reed coughed, his throat and voice were still rather raw as he responded. "I'd be rather interested in finding that out myself."

--

The small figure fell from the Puppet Master's grip and as it landed one of its wings snapped off. Of course the connection between the puppet and the man it represented had been broken just before it happened, so all this meant was that he would need to repair the figure before it could be used again. Though that was hardly a problem compared to how close he'd come to his goal, only to have victory snatched away from him.

But it didn't matter, Mr. Fantastic might have been able to break his control this time, but that was only because he had been right next to the puppet while its true mater had been far away. Let the two of them be side by side battling for control of the same mind, and he was extremely sure who would prove the victor then!

Granted now that his foes were aware of him they would no doubt soon be coming to pay him a visit, hah, let them! He went to the necessary drawer and pulled another puppet that would dance quite readily to his commands.

--

When Susan awoke she found herself seated in her underwear on a fancy wooden chair in some room that she was unfamiliar with. She tried to stand up but couldn't. Lengthening her neck and rotating it around she soon saw what was the problem, her arms and legs had been wrapped around the legs of the chair in tight knots that seemed to be as numerous as they were complicated.

She sighed and sank a little further into the seat, if such things were possible. Of course almost as quickly as despair filled her, it with was replaced with hope as she completed the 360 degree rotation of her neck and saw that no one else was in the room with her. "Guess my captor didn't get the memo about how Ultra Woman's entire body is elastic. To think Reed said using my powers for all that kinky bondage sex was nothing but fun for he sake of fun!"

Susan elongated her neck even further and redirected it, wrapping it around the right arm of the chair time after time after time after time, trying to make her neck as thin as possible so that she could fit as many loops in as possible. After managing to work in a dozen loops she felt ready to move onto the next stage of her plan.

She "heaved" her neck out, not really stretching it, just exerting a force on it, trying to make it to go a little farther. That force travelled all along the length of her neck and was exerted on the chair's arm once for every single coil wrapped around it.

She heard a delightful creaking sound from the chair's arm and she repeated the process, this time getting more of a cracking sound. "One more should do it..." Indeed it did, as her neck wrenched the arm right off of the chair. From there it was only a few seconds worth of work to extract the piece of wood from the tangled mess her right arm currently was.

Which left her right arm tied around itself and just itself, Ultra Woman had figured out how to deal with that problem a couple months back. Just like a Chinese finger trap, she stretched her arm pressing inwards from both sides and one after another the knots fell away. Now that she had a fully functioning arm under her control the rest of this escape was going to be child's play. She extended that arm above her head, shaping it into the form of a giant mallet. A mallet that she brought crashing down on herself, flattening her body in the process, and turning the chair into a pile of broken splinters.

The difference of course was that while she could pull herself back together, the chair didn't seem to be in the mood for going another round with its elastic opponent. "Houdini eat your heart out..."

No sooner were the words out of her mouth then Susan realized that maybe she was getting just a little full of herself. After all, it was only in works of fiction that you were called a great hero if you managed able to escape whatever death trap you got tossed into after the villain captured you.

Not to mention being tied to a chair with her own body didn't exactly qualify as a death trap. Susan had managed to get knocked out, captured, and escape her restraints, that meant she was currently par for the course, if the course in question was being graded kindly.

Either way, she had to get out of here and warn Reed and Johnny about what she'd heard, and picking up a new unstable molecule uniform probably would be a good idea as well. Luckily, a way to escape was right there, not sure of what other traps her captor might have hidden about his house, she just walked over, raised a nearby window the necessary crack and slithered her upper body out it, heading for the roof.

As she was stretching her body up the side of the building Susan decided she'd probably want to avoid moving from roof to roof on her way back to the Baxter Building. It would take longer, but it was also be a bit more discrete, and discrete was something she very much wanted to be at the moment. For reasons that she did not at all want to consider her captor had not only left her tied but dressed in only he bra and panties as well. Photos of a half (3/4ths if you were going by amount of skin covered against not covered) naked Susan Storm were doubtlessly publicity that the Fantastic Four could do without.

As she reached the roof she drew some solace form the fact that as underwear went, at least she was pretty well covered. Her unstable molecule bra kept "the girls" firmly in check and her panties completely covered her ass. There were plenty of women who walked around in swimsuits that were more revealing than what she currently had on after all.

But those thoughts brought her little comfort, especially after she realized that her legs and lower body should have caught up with her by now, but for some reason they were still inside. Then she felt herself stretching, but it was the wrong way. Instead of her legs joining her up on the rooftop her upper body was being pulled back down towards her legs, as if she was a fish caught on some invisible line.

No matter what she told her body to do, it didn't matter in the slightest, she was inexorably yanked backwards right through the window she had left through. "Trying to escape my dear?" She turned around, but for some reason her body reacted much more slowly then she wanted it to. The bald man who was obviously behind whatever particular evil villainy was going on her smiled up at her. In his right hand he held a small clay doll that except for lacking color was a perfect scale model of Susan.

"Witness why they will soon all call me the Puppet Maser! Now then come along, I'll need your help to be properly ready when your friends arrive..." As he walked away Susan found herself following him even though every fiber of her being wanted to put as much distance between the two of them as possible.

--

"I'm not sure how I feel about leaving that poor blind girl alone, but you're right rescuing Susy Q comes first Reed." The three were currently rocketing across the city's skyline in Reed's newest creation. After defences of Doom's castle had destroyed their Pogo Plane he'd determined to make the Fantasticar didn't come to a similar end.

That was why he'd built some of Doom's own forcefield technology into the thing among other improvements. "Ben, I think being in the grip of a mind controlling maniac ranks way higher on the list of bad situations for a girl to in then simply being blind and left alone in the Baxter Building with a bed to lie down on. So are you sure you know where this guy is? I mean I find it sort of hard to trust anything you 'saw' while you weren't in control of your own body."

While Reed didn't agree with the crass tone in his voice, he fully agreed with Johnny's logic. "You don't have to worry about us going on a wild goose chase, I've got a perfect mental lock on where Susan is. Unfortunately she's not responding so she must be unconscious. Luckily we should be reaching the spot right about now." He worked the controls carefully (if he hadn't built the Fantasticar himself he doubted he'd be able to handle such a complex machine after only a month of having a body back again) and it slowed down starting its descent.

Wheels extended and the thing lowered down in the middle of a currently unoccupied two lane street. "Umm Reed, you're aware that just because we're superheroes doesn't mean we can't get parking tickets right?" Reed crawled out of his seat and dropped to the ground. "Don't worry Ben, my armor allows me limited remote control of the Fantasticar, once you two are out of it I can have it use its VTOL capacities to lift of and just hover until we need it again."

Ben hopped out of the machine and using his wings to slow his descent, and Johnny transformed to his Mandroid form before exiting the Fantasticar. Reed made the necessary motions to send their vehicle skyward, before he tried the knob on the door that Ben had pointed out. It was locked.

Just like back when he had been witnessing Victor use this armor (and this body) to defeat his teamates the prospect of the woman he cared about suffering drove Reed Richards to actions he wouldn't have normally even considered committing. "CRUNCH!" Doom's armor increased the wearer's strength considerably, after all Victor had used to go toe to toe with Johnny in hand to hand combat.

But it was still a bit surprising for Reed to discover he'd just gone and punched straight through a stout wooden door. "No fair, I wanted to do that!" Acting more on instinct then anything else, Reed reached over and unlocked the door, opening it from the inside before pulling his arm out of the hole he had made in it. Looking ahead Reed saw another door waiting for him a few feet away.

Just out and out breaking into someone's house was a new experience for a him, normally he'd suggest having Susan stretch under the door and unlock them, thus limiting the amount property damage they cause, but that was a catch-22 since it'd mean they needed Susan to find Susan. Which was why he decided to follow the old adage, in for a penny, in for a pound. "If you want to lead the way Johnny be my guest..."

With cry of exhilaration Johnny started running up the stairs, dashed past Reed and slammed into the next door like a freight train reducing it to splinters. Reed and Ben followed close behind, and from the large room Johnny had smashed his way into the three made their way upstairs and through another door into some new room with no obvious function.

What mattered was that Susan was sitting apparently unconscious in only her bra and panties with ducktape over her mouth, apparently held in place by simple piece of rope. Johnny showing surprising thoughtfulness stood back and let Reed approach her first as he began to gingerly pull the ducktape off, with any luck Susan's powers would do something to reduce the pain.

Besides, it also apparently had the side effect he'd hopped it would, her blue eyes began to slowly open. "Susan are you all right?" "Reed it's a trap!" Before she could say anything else, her body easily slid free of its restraints, then began to flow around them. First a single loop, then another, she just kept stretching her body in ever tightening concentric circles, until the three surprised superheroes found themselves all but completely engulfed by her elastic body.

Susan for her part cast he eyes downward, and as she blinked, a pair of tears fell from them. "And I'm not just the bait..." A door opened and a short bald man holding a perfect scale clay representation of what Susan normally looked like walked in. "I could have easily put less threatening words in her mouth, but I think it is so very amusing to watch her completely aware of what she's doing, still able to think and talk, and yet completely unable to stop herself.

Now I the Puppet Master not only have Ultra Woman completely under my control, but the rest of the Fantastic Four trapped like flies in honey!" It was true, Ben Johnny and Reed all struggled, but Susan's body was wrapped so tightly around them that even Johnny couldn't get enough momentum to make proper use of his strength.

"Reed since you're suppose to be the smart one, it'd be really nice if you could think up a way out of this right about now." Reed tired to free Susan from the Puppet Master's control using the same technique that had worked on Ben, but he quickly discovered it was hopeless.

This time around the gray wasn't soft and yielding beneath his attacks like clay, it was hard as concrete and even though Susan's hold on him wasn't tight enough to interfere with his breathing and mental abilities, the best he could manage was to scratch the stuff. Even worse the Puppet Master had evidently sensed his mental probes.

"Hah, was that the best you could truly manage Mr. Fantastic? It almost makes me wonder why I ever bothered to considered you a threat." Reed sighed, there was only one thing to do now, play for time and hope that some opportunity presented itself. "Why are you doing this to us?" The Puppet Master laughed maniacally. "Why? Because I can.

Because being able to play with you four as my own personal puppets will be just the edge I need in order to force the entire world to bow to my unshakeable will! I only need one more thing to complete my plan, a good look at your face. Something I'll be taking right now." He slowly began to crawl over Susan's body, and wrapped his hands around Reed's mask. Behind that mask Reed smiled even as the Puppet Master yanked at the edges of his metal facemask, this very much have the makings of an opportunity.

Time passed, the Puppet Master huffed and puffed in irritation. He had pulled with both of his hands (placing the replica of Susan in a pocket of his white outfit) from every single direction he could think of, each had been as fruitless an effort as the last. For a simple reason to, the mechanism to release the facemask was in Reed's gauntlets, so he could have kept pulling on the mask itself till his arms wrenched themselves free from their sockets without hope of success. For the first time Reed was extremely glad that Victor's ego had been had been so large and easily offended. "Accursed thing! No matter, you only delay the inevitable, I'll fry it off with a welding torch if I have to!"

The Puppet Master climbed off Susan's body and stood with his head more or less level with Reed's arm, just where Mr. Fantastic wanted him to be. "It wouldn't work even then, and you won't get the chance. I'm about to make you pay for what you did to Ben and Susan." The Puppet Master just laughed at him. "Oh really? Very well then, I have already soundly defeated you in a battle of the minds, do you're worst."

Just had Reed had hoped (and it shamed him slightly to say, prayed) his foes physical exhaustion was weakening his mental grip on Susan slightly. It wasn't much, but it was enough for Reed to psychically order her to shift her body ever so slightly, allowing Reed's right hand from going to be pointed vertically down to being horizontally flat. Then pressed his tongue to the side of his mask, and gave his armor's newest addition its first field test.

Of course Susan's body just stretched to absorb the concussive force that struck it, but that was Reed's plan. Her flesh was pushed outwards and slammed into the Puppet Master's face with all the power of one of her elastic slaps. The Puppet Master reeled backwards, the replica of Susan falling from its perch, and then the one factor that Reed hadn't taken into account on took effect, the window.

The Puppet Master stumbled, and fell backwards through it in a shower of glass. For a few moments the four could do nothing but wait there anticlimactically, Susan still tightly binding them. Then, her body relaxed allowing the three to wriggle their way free, and as they did so quickly returned to her normal appearance.

Johnny did not shift out of his metal form, as he looked askance at the broken window. "Reed, did you just sort of... I mean is he...? I know you didn't mean to, and he was trying to take over the world and all, but after what happened to Victor, you're starting to develop a habit of shooting rabid dogs aren't you?" Been flapped over to the broken window and looked out through it as well. "Normally I'd agree with you 100 sparkplug, except that if his body landed somewhere in that alley I sure as hell don't see it."

Susan stretched her own neck over, indeed the obvious signs of a broken and bleeding body was completely and utterly absent. Reed as well scanned the alley with telescopic, infrared, and heat sensitive vision, all of them coming up with nothing out of the ordinary. Susan pulled her neck back in through the window, practically standing on tip toe next to him. "Well Reed, what do you think happened?"

Reed pondered the question for almost a full twenty seconds, an unreasonably long time before responding. "Well common sense would suggest that we've doubtlessly seen the last of him, but common sense hasn't proved very effective at predicting events in our lives ever since we gained our powers. After all, there was at least a full minute between when he fell and when his control of Susan waned.

It's entirely possible that he had some kind of, something, that let him survive the landing and then he got out of the alley before we were able to look for him. Luckily separated by such distance from the puppets that evidently act as a focus for his powers, his mental grip weakened. Unfortunately, its also possible he kept a backup supply of that special clay on his person, a lump or two would be all he needs to take control of someone..."

Johnny buried his face in his metal hands. "So it's possible that we didn't do a single thing to stop him from moving forwards with one diabolical plan or another? Is it too late to go back to the possibility that Reed just accidentally offed him? I mean he was a supervillian who had just given us an entire monologue about he planned to conquer the world. Any jury in the city would agree it was justifiable self defence."

Reed shook his head, turning his attention to the wooden cabinets in the room. "First off Johnny weather or not it would be seen as legal hardly determines weather or not its right. As for not having done anything to hamper his efforts, if he's still alive, first off we can neutralize his largest stockpile of special clay right here and also get rid of whatever puppets he's already crafted. Also I can study the exact nature of the clay, and we should be able to figure out exactly where it comes from and see that the authorities take actions to keep him from getting his hands on any more of it.

We've already proven that he needs to be close to gain control of any of us because of my own psychic powers, so its unlikely he'll be able to strike back at us any time soon. Well get the regular authorities looking for him, and hopefully he'll have no choice but to keep his head down. At the very least, I think we've seen the last of the Puppet Master for a while, and he lost the greatest advantage that he had over us, surprise. We know there's at least a possibility that he's still out there, and what powers he possesses." Ben's wings fluttered slightly as he shook his head. "That poor girl Alica, the Puppet Master might have been a whacko bent on world domination, but he was also all she had."

Reed opened up the cabinet and began to pull replicas well dressed people out of it (Susan recognized one of them as the mayor) but he suddenly turned around, and one would guess that he was smiling behind the mask. "Well, if you're that worried about her Ben, considering the Baxter Building currently has more floors then people living in it, we could probably offer her a place to stay for a while."

Johnny finally did revert to flesh, and swooned melodramatically. "Aww isn't that just sweet, Benjy's got a crush." Ben growled and raised a shaking fist. "The girl can't see, why don't you try wearing a blindfold for a week and find out how easy it is to keep from slamming your metal head on the floor and walls till you finally break through them? And before you get started making any 'blind date' jokes, don't." Susan's brother made the appropriate "zipping the lips closed" gesture.

--

"And so that's how it happened, Alica isn't it?" The orange haired girl nodded and Ben continued. "Anyway, since we realize what a problem this might be for you, I've convinced the others to let you stay here if you wanted to." Alica reached out fumbled around for a few moments and then found his right hand. "Thank you very much for the offer Mr. Grimm, but I'm afraid I think it would be best if I turned it down."

Ben blushed, rather grateful that Alica couldn't see it. "If you're going to let me call you by Alica then I'm gonna have to ask that you call me Ben, okay? And are you sure that you wouldn't be better off hanging around here?" Alica shook her head firmly. "Very well then Ben, it's just even though I can't see, I've got a very good memory.

I know my way around my step father's place so well that I don't even need a cane any more. But if I moved in here then I'd have to start memorizing my home all over again. Not to mention the last thing a group of superheroes like you four need is someone like me hopelessly underfoot." Ben sighed and gave Alica's hand a firm shake before he slowly let go of it. "All right then, but whatever happens I'll, the entire Fantastic Four will be only too glad to help out.

So if you find that without your step father hanging around you need a little help making ends meet don't be afraid to give us a call." Alica shook her head once again. "I think I'll be fine as long as I've got my work and my agent." "Your work?" Ben wasn't sure why he had instantly assumed that being blind must have meant this girl basically just sat around all day reading books in brail, but then sight had been a pretty darn important ability in all the occupations he'd ever considered. "I'm a sculptress.

Most of my real money earning work is doing reproductions of various people. Because of my memory I don't need a subject to pose for me while I work I just need to run my hands all along their body once. There are plenty of important people who want a sculpture of themselves of one size or another but don't feel like sanding around for hours on end to get it done so they come to me. You've never heard of Alica Master's the blind sculptress?"

Ben shook his head wondering for a moment why exactly he was bothering with vissual body language that Alica wouldn't get, but old habits were hard to break. "Can't say I have, but then I never was much for art. Still, I'm glad to know you'll land on your feet." Alica took a step closer, though her hands still hung at her sides. "Well I'd be glad to do a sculpture or two of you and your friends, as a way of repaying your kindness if nothing else."

"We're superheroes, kindness sorta goes with the job description." Then to Ben's surprise she reached out and began to run a hand along one of his wings. "Well, I'd like to try anyway. The intricate patterns on your wings, they'd be a challenge to capture, but quite beautiful if done correctly."

As she worked her way down his wings there were two main trains of thought running in opposite directions in Ben's mind. The first one was that since she couldn't see, touch was the only way that she could find out what her subjects looked like, but on the other hand, he couldn't quite shake the possibility that maybe Alica was trying to send hints his way that you couldn't miss even if you were blind.

Whichever was true, he let her run her hands fully along both his wings, and just his wings before he spoke up. "So do you think you'd be able to make it back to your place by yourself all right?" Alica pulled her hands away form him and sighed. "Probably, but since I was more or less just following you on the way here my memory of the path we took might not be quite as good as it could be. If you're offering to escort me back home I wouldn't say no."

For another few moments Ben considered offering to fly her back home since it'd be quicker, but he decided against it. The poor girl had obviously been through enough for one day, she could go without the sensation of being weightless and utterly helpless a hundred or so feet up in the air. "Well then I'd be glad to do just that." Even as he took Alica's hand so that he could lead the way, he couldn't help but ask himself one question. Being blind, would she find it more or less frightening then the average if he was flying with her in his arms? After all she literally couldn't look down, but that was a question that could wait to be answered till another much later day.

--

Reed didn't have too much trouble finding Susan, she was sitting up on her bed (or considering how much use the two had gotten out of it over the course of the last month it might as well be considered their bed) wordlessly practicing an unorthodox use for her powers. She pulled her arm back, then whipped it forward, stretching out her arm and curling her fist into a perfect sphere in the process. It bounced off the floor, off the far wall, and then with a twist of her wrist it snapped back to its normal position and shape.

Reed hesitantly stood at the side of the bed. "Something bothering you?" Susan repeated the trick and then shook her head. On one hand Reed wanted to respect her privacy, but on the other hand, being in a relationship (whatever exactly their relationship was at the moment) meant that they were expected to share things with one another.

Not to mention Reed was pretty sure that if left unchecked, her current mood would seep into her performance as Ultra Woman, and then it might end up not just affecting him but the rest of the team (if not the entire world) as well. So he slowly and carefully got into bed next to Susan, his body language making it clear that there was nothing sexual about the action. Susan for her part either didn't mind, or just didn't care, wordlessly bouncing her arm off the floor and wall once again.

"You know, all things considered, amoeba's have to be just about the stupidest living things on the face of the planet. Not to say their inefficiently designed, it is just that for the most part their nothing more than glorified cells. No higher thought processes at all, they just head natures various calls. They engulf their prey entirely so that it isn't so much digested as absorbed. Then they generates packets of waste materials that they can push them out through the membrane that separates their bodies from the world around them. After which, if they've managed to absorb enough energy, they'll create duplicates of all their organelles, and reproduce by splitting themselves right down the middle turning one amoeba into two."

Susan was apparently unimpressed, since only the sound of her outstretched fist ricocheting against floor and wall answered his unasked questions. Undaunted Reed pressed on. "Humans on the other hand are considerably more advanced, though that's a gigantic understatement to say the least. That ability to think and reason has been the driving force behind humanity's ability to not only survive, but also thrive in all but the most unbearable places."

Susan looked like she was about to throw her fist against the wall again, but stopped midmotion and turned to look at Reed who wasn't wearing any of his armor (though he was wearing his newly designed flesh facemask) at the moment. "You know, it really is amazing how someone as smart as you can be so painfully unsubtle at times." Reed could only shrug helplessly. "I'm just saying that it would probably be better for you to be open about what's bothering you, rather then just trying to ignore it.

That's the entire point of having a team isn't it? When one of us is having trouble the other's pitch in to help. Now if there are some things you'd rather not talk with Johnny or Ben about, I can understand, but I'd like to think that there's nothing we need to hide from one another." Susan sighed emphatically, adjusting her posture from sitting up to laying down with her head on a pillow. "Fine then, you want to know what's bothering me Reed? Everything."

Reed was just a little bit surprised by her answer. "I don't suppose you could find a way to be a bit more specific?" Susan sighed again, and held out her hands, lengthening her fingers for a moment before returning them back to normal. "Since about noon today I've been screwing up every single thing I've tried to do, which coincidentally happens to be all the important stuff I've tried to do today.

Yes I'm good in, as, or around the bed, I'm a fine cook, and I know how to fill a dress but that's all well, 'wife stuff' for lack of a better term. So while Susan Storm had a bang up morning, Ultra Woman had a really lousy afternoon. I couldn't get hold of that jumper which should have been incredibly easy for me. At the Puppet Master's house I had a warning that I might have given myself away, but rather then sensibly heading back to inform you three about what I already knew, I kept going further into the lion's mouth and got captured, and to top it off not only was I unable to escape but the Puppet Master almost managed to use me as a way of subduing the three of you. That's what's bothering me Reed."

While she spoke she returned to her sitting up position on the bed. As if he was handling an extremely dangerous substance that might react violently at any moment, Reed began to slowly work an arm forward, bringing it down on Susan's shoulder all while watching her face to see if she showed any sign of discomfort. She didn't, and once Reed had completed this action he spoke. "Ultra Woman, I don't care about any of that."

Weather it was Susan Storm or Ultra Woman that Reed was in bed with, she huffed indignantly at his words. "Well I do. Being a superheroine is my day job, even if its hardly a 9/5 employment schedule, it's still what I'm going to choose to do every time the opportunity presents itself, not to mention it is obviously the most important thing I can do with my life.

So if I fail at being a superheroine, it makes me feel like a failure no matter what else I'm good at." Reed slowly began to shift his posture, trying to work that arm on Susan's right shoulder over to her left one so that he could pull her closer. "So Susan, that 'wife stuff' even if you feel it is rather unimportant, you also feel like you're very good at it?" During her nod Reed's fingers slowly moved a few more centimetres.

"How long exactly have you been working in those particular areas?" There was another sigh so great that Reed was sure he saw her body bludge outwards slightly as she drew the air in before letting it out. "Cooking more or less since I was in my late teens, you know ever since my mother died and my dad left me and Johnny alone to look after each other. As for the dresses, probably ever since I graduated highschool. As for the sex, well since you were my first you'd probably know how long better then I do, though I think we didn't start really rocking each other's worlds until a month ago for obvious reasons. Why do you ask?"

Reed answered Susan's question with another of his own. "And how long have you been a superheroine?" Susan shook her mane of blond hair in irritation. "Seven months more or less, I think we both know that pretty well, once again, why do you ask?" Reed moved his hand just another millimeter or so, hoping that now that he had fully laid things out for Susan to see, she would better understand his point. "I ask because I'm trying to help you realize Susan that not everything in the world comes as quickly as these powers.

Even though I was incredibly gifted as a child, it still took me years, decades of hard work to become as intelligent as I am today. That's why how good a superheroine you are right now doesn't bother me, and it shouldn't bother you. We're all still learning how to best use our powers, what exactly it means to be a superhero team, and unfortunently it's not like there are books one can study on the subject before hand.

Whatever your issues with your performance, we still doubtlessly can consider today a win. That means the only way that whatever mistakes we made matter, is that we make sure to learn from them. The longer we work at it, the simple basics of superheroing, how to use our powers, how to work together, the better we'll get at them. Give yourself some time Susan and I promise once you've gotten plenty of experience at it you'll be able to do a wonderful job at anything you set your mind to."

Susan's body seemed to deflate slightly, sliding out of Reed's grasp, all but turning into a two dimensional representation of herself, and yet it didn't effect her ability to talk. "You talk about the future Reed, but that's exactly what I'm most worried about, that I'm getting worse instead of better. Twice today my powers seemed determine to cut out on me well before I reached what I thought my limits were.

When we were rescuing you a month ago, Victor had set up a trap for me that involved a room quickly filling to the brim with concrete, but I was able to thin my body down to the point that I was able to move through the tiny airpockets in the stuff and escape. Today? Today I couldn't even stretch my body straight up to the top of a bridge I was standing on, or expand myself enough to fill a room.

So what if I already hit the peak of my powers and can only go down from there? Maybe I'm nothing but a rubber band who's been stretched one too many times. I don't have much left in the way of snap, my edges are starting to fray, and it's only a matter of time till I break apart..."

Reed reached out and cradled as much as he could of Susan's limp form in his hands. "You know, your not the only one who worries about things like that." The downcast nature of Susan's eyes seemed to vanish and her body began to feel a bit more like normal, normal for her at least. "What do you mean?" Reed pressed a finger firmly to his head. "Ever since I got this body, my mental powers just haven't been what they used to be.

Time was when I could effortlessly keep track of any of the three of you, 'see' through your eyes with but a thought, now I have to focus to do it. Not to mention there are things I used to be able to do that now I just flat out can't. Before I had a body, even if I hadn't been able to defeat the Puppet Master in a battle of will for control of your mind, I could have simply disarmed him by using telekinesis to pull whatever puppet he was using right out of his hands. Now? Now I can't flip a coin with my mind, let alone pit my mental muscles against someone else's physical ones and win."

Susan snorted derisively. "So what? Even if your mental abilities aren't what they used to be you've still got Doom's armor which should more than make up for them in most situations." Reed just calmly pointed a finger straight at the "puddle" that was Susan's face. "Would it make you feel more confident in your abilities as a superheroine if I offered to make a suit of hightech armor for you?' Susan pulled herself back to normal sat up and shook her head decisively.

"No, I guess I see your point Reed, our powers are our own and unique. So when we use them, we're doing what no one else could do. That's why we both want to be able to do as much as we can with them." Reed nodded, glad to see that he had gotten his point across. "Tell you what then, right here and now the two of us can shake hands and promise that no matter what, we'll keep practicing, keep learning how to do every single thing we can with our powers.

And if for some reason it seems like we're running out of fuel for them, then I'll find a way to artificially replicate the accident that gave them to us in the first place, if that doesn't recharge, or possibly even supercharge our batteries nothing will." Susan took his hand and shook it. "Deal." " Besides Ultra Woman, considering that even if you were under the Puppet Master's control at the time you still managed to effectively defeat all three of us I wouldn't worry too much about the possibilities that you're powers are decreasing."

Susan just sat there for a moment and then she smiled. "Yeah, I guess I did, maybe this old girls has got more snap left in her then I thought." Reed smiled as well, he was the leader of the Fantastic Four, it was his job to make sure that the other members of the team were happy and that of course went double (if not triple) when Susan Storm was involved. "A greater exaggeration then you calling yourself 'old' is hard to imagine." For a few moments her face glowed with pride, though it turned to suspicion rather quickly. "By the way Reed, don't think you're fooling me, I know perfectly well why you want to keep Ultra Woman around. Once a man's had a taste of my fantastic elastic love, every page of the Karma Sutra seems pathetically closed minded by comparison."

Reed chuckled, glad to see Susan starting to feel noticeably more energetic. "While you are right, without your powers I'd never feel quite so, intimate, with you, that's not what I like the most about how you've acted since you got your powers." Susan's entire body began to ripple slightly and she extend herself across the bed, evidently determined to keep Reed there for as long as she pleased. "Really, then you can consider me intrigued, what could you possibly enjoy more?"

Reed looked up at the ceiling and took a moment to properly marshal his thoughts. "A relationship is like an oral contract, on second thought that's not a very good metaphor, since all things considered up to the point that it becomes officially documented as a marriage a relationship actually is nothing more then an oral contract but..." There was a tugging sensation as Susan pulled herself taut around Reed's chest, a none too subtle nudge of her own about how he should be getting to the point. "Anyway, like any oral contract a relationship can either be an all but unbreakable bond, or something that could be undone by a single gust of wind.

What determines how strong it is, is how much faith is put into it, and once one person starts to put faith into it, the other invariably follows unless they intend to deceive their partner. One of the biggest problem that the two of us had before we gained our powers, is that while we both love each other, neither of us had put much faith in the relationship.

So when I heard you talk about how you were determined to stick it out with me, even when I didn't have a body, all of a sudden for the first time one of us was not only invested, but investing in our relationship. That's why I can fearlessly throw myself at you whenever you ask me to, because even though that's just sex, it's built on a foundation so solid that not even an earthquake could shake it."

To Reed's surprise Susan seemed more miffed then anything else by his words. "So you expected me to be the first one to put faith in our relationship? Next thing you know you'll be asking me if I really can do that amoeba trick of splitting myself in half so that I can handle the entire task of producing our children as well."

There was a certain amount of whimsy in her voice, but it was far from being the most prevailing element. "Susan, in my book someone is never smarter then when they know there own limitations, and I just happen to know that I fall pretty far short of average when it comes to romance.

That's why I didn't have much faith in our relationship, even though I loved you, I was always worried that I'd end up saying or doing the wrong thing, and then it would be all over before I even realized what exactly I'd made a mistake." At those words she loosened her grip on him, slightly.

"Okay, but take a look at it from my perspective. Back when we first started going out I was an under-endowed slip of a girl who's IQ would probably wasn't, and probably never will be half of yours. Not to mention I came with the wonderful baggage of a younger brother who still is determined to prove that even if his body is growing up doesn't mean he has to.

I was constantly worried that I'd turn out to be nothing but your flavor of the month or first conquest. A proving and practice ground, before you moved onto someone who you had more genuine interests in. That's one of the main reasons I decided to go with you on that flight into space. I 'knew' for a fact that considering how famous it would make you, you'd have women lining up around the block for a chance at you, so I needed to do everything I could to keep myself on the inside track, like being the woman who was right there in space with you.

Of course the entire, you getting turned into a living brain thing did a pretty good job of keep that from coming to pass, but like you would say, I was just working from the data I had on hand at the time. Still, if you want faith in our relationship, I think it's safe to say you've got it." As if to prove her point, Susan wrapped various parts of her body around Reed's, carefully keeping her grip snug rather then painful. "Even if I end up looking like a fool who can't properly express his boundless love for you?"

Susan's face came to rest only a few inches away from Reed's. "I haven't been driven away by that particular flaw so far. Personally I'll be satisfied as long as I can tell you're trying." "Do you know what I'd like to try right now?" Susan began to throw on another loop of her body around Reed's, adding this one more slowly and seductively then the others. "What?"

"I'd like to finally give you a proper physical so that I could not only get a better understanding of how your powers work, and also possibly find out what's going wrong with them." Susan's entire body went slack at once. "That's exactly the kind of mood killing but well meaning statment that I'm more or less perfectly willing to put up with. Besides, you've got a point, knowing what is going on inside me, and even better what to do about it, probably would do more to insure I get a good night's sleep then any overly extravagant style of sex I cared to have with you."

--

It felt like it went on for hours, but that was probably just a mix of her being on edge about finding out the final results, and how boring it was to just lie there while Reed poked, prodded, and otherwise studied her. Of course it became even more boring once Reed had gathered all the information he wanted and started analyzing it since she was left with absolutely nothing to do. Before she knew it, Susan was transforming one of her shoulders into something that more or less passed for a pillow and falling asleep on it, only to be woken up to the sight of the other three members of the Fantastic Four standing beside her.

Susan undid her stretch, smiled sheepishly and then slid off the examining table she'd ended up catching a nap on. Apparently while she'd been asleep Reed had not only called in the other two members of the Fantastic Four but also put on his armor. "Sorry I didn't wake you sooner Susan, but seeing as how exhausting today turned out to be I thought you could use the rest. But now that you're awake, if the three of you would just follow me I'll show you exactly what I've deduced."

Susan walked in the direction Reed indicated slowly, her mind reeling with all the possible horrible things that could be happening to her. That indeed her powers were going away, that her powers were getting 'stronger' and before she knew it she really would be nothing more then an elastic amoeba, that she'd contracted some kind of deadly disease and the havoc it was playing with her powers was the first symptom of it.

The sound of Reed's voice somehow managed to break through the conga line of terrors, each one more horrible then the last, that was currently dancing through her head. "It was just a hunch at first, but after I noticed how all the signs seemed to be pointing towards one thing in particular I looked for it, and sure enough there it was. I've come to a 99.9999999 certain conclusion that Susan Storm is pregnant." For a few moments Susan just stood their dumbly thinking "oh, so that's all it is..." then reality hit her like a ten ton brick.

--

Three voices responded at the exact same time with almost the exact same words, Ben and Johnny both harmonized on "she's what?" while Susan responded with her own "I'm what?" Reed just shrugged helplessly. "Susan all the data I've gathered points towards the all but inevitable conclusion that you're pregnant." Johnny was the first one who managed to get actual independent words out of his mouth concerning the situation. "How exactly did this happen?"

This question had a strange effect on Ben, because for a moment he was able to fall into his old routine of bantering with Johnny rather than focusing on the shocking news. "Well Tinman, when two humans love each other very much, the man sticks his one into her zero, and then..." Johnny luckily didn't let his anger at being mocked get the better of him to such an extent that he transformed before he knocked away the hand Ben had patronizingly placed on his shoulder.

"Thanks for telling me exactly what I already know wings, that part I'm already familiar with. I'm just wondering how exactly did it happen in this particular situation? Since it involves my sister, who always told me that it didn't matter how head over heels in love I was, I wasn't suppose to do it unless we both used protection."

Susan couldn't help it, she blushed even as she tried to look stern. "Well I'm still your older sister, and I was the closest thing you had to a mother at the time, so remember, do as I say not as I do. Besides, it's complicated, you see I though I was infertile at the time..." "Which given current circumstances is a possibility that we can rule out rather firmly." It took no great skill to notice that just maybe there was a bit too much pride in Reed's voice as he made that announcement.

Susan just sighed, admitting to herself (but certainly not out loud) that technically Reed did have something to be proud of, he'd done his part from a evolutionary standpoint, he'd managed to get her pregnant. Hell, from that same standpoint Susan had something to be proud of as well, apparently her womb wasn't the barren inhospitable wasteland she had though it was.

"I suppose at the very least that explains why I've been tossing some of my meals recently. So exactly how far along am I?" Reed took a moment to glance at the clipboard he was holding, though Susan was sure he had already memorized every single word, every single letter on it.

"You're about a month along give or take. But there's something else that stuck out rather blatantly once I started testing you, there's more than one fetus." As he was somewhat prone to, Johnny's temperament changed as quickly as skin could. "Really? Cool, I'm going to be the uncle to a pair of twins!" Reed's eyes went back to the sheet and Susan felt a sinking sensation settle deep in her gut, as if her belly was stretching itself out till it hit the floor.

"I'm sorry, I guess I should have just come out and said it at the start, but it's significantly more then twins. If my equipment is correct I believe it's sextuplets." Ben and Johnny just staired on in confusion, while Susan buried her face in her hands, sighed, and then explained the term that she recongized only because as a woman it was her place to know such things. "That's six." Once again the two other male members of the Fantastic Four harmonized saying the exact same words. "Six?"

Ben took a couple steps closer, his hands the perfect distance away from her. They weren't actually touching her, but they were close enough for her to feel their warmth. That was just the right distance for a man who had both entered and exited the running for her affections due to incredibly unlikely circumstances. "Well gee Susy, I'm not sure if I should be congratulating you, or saying that you've got my condolences."

Johnny of course seemed bound and determined to destroy the drama of the situation. "Six? As in two, plus two, plus another two? Two times three? Wow, no wonder my sister suggested that you call yourself Mr. Fantastic." Reed of course was as ever noticeably humble for someone in his situation. "This unexpected development says more about Susan's fertility then my virility Johnny. And now, would you two mind horribly if I asked for some time alone with Susan so that we can discuss this development in private? While it doubtlessly does effect on the entire team, the two of us are a bit more personally involved in it, to say the least."

For a response Ben grabbed Johnny by the shoulder and started flapping his wings to help him pull Susan's brother from the room before he could react. "Come on rust bucket, lets get going, the dish is out at the moment and I need you to stand behind the TV and shift back and forth until the reception picks up again."

Reed closed the door behind them with another small satisfied nod. "Would you like to lie down?" Susan nodded dumbly and with his armor augmented strength Reed easily lifted Susan up, another quick psychic command and a good sized bed folded out of one of the walls of his lab. Then Reed simply laid her down on it, then lifted up her head, fluffed a pillow gently before returning to its orrigional resting place.

"Six of them..." Susan repeated the words several times, like a child having been told that their beloved pet had died, and that they simply refused to believe it unless they heard it from their own lips several times over. Eventually however she managed to gather her wits, slightly at least, she was still more babbling then truly speaking. "I've got some memories of back when my mother was pregnant with Johnny. They're sorta fuzzy, but from what I can remember, she was huge. That's probably just my memory playing tricks with me, especially because I was hardly fully grown at the time, but still, six!"

Reed just nodded along as best he could. "Well at least now that we know about it, we can start planning for how to deal with it. Though I suppose it couldn't have gone unnoticed for very long given just how many children your pregnant with, but my point is that you're not even halfway into the first trimester, the things still have tails after all. So, if you wanted to abort them, or even just some of them to leave yourself pregnant with a more manageable number, I'd be more then willing to help get you in contact with someone who could take care of the operation.."

Susan placed her hands on her still flat belly, though she didn't imagine it would stay that way much longer. "Thanks for the offer, but I don't think so, doubly no to that second option. Even as a superheroine, no, especially because I'm a superheroine, I don't feel comfortable with the idea of picking out who lives and who dies, even though I know you could talk my arms off about how they're not really 'my children' yet.

It'd have to be all or none of them, and I don't think I want to lose all of them. Considering that I wasn't even menstruating to start with when this happened, if we throw this chance away we might not get another one. So I guess I want to keep the little bastards, all six of them." "Language Susan, language." Somehow the way Reed instinctively bristled at her profanities made her feel a little bit better about everything.

"What, I was just describing the situation. Yeah we've been going back and forth in our relationship for a while, and for the last month we've deffiently been 'on' pretty dam hard, but that's all. We're not husband and wife, or even engaged. Which would by default make these children bastards."

Reed shook his head firmly. "Actually, the dictionary definition of the term only applies to children who are born when their parents aren't married, not ones which are conceived that way. And personally I don't think there's a chance in hell of that coming to pass, at least, not unless you want it to." Reed talking scientifically about curse words was something absurd enough to make her giggle like a knocked up schoolgirl, which coincidentally she currently more or less was, or at least felt like.

"Of course I'll marry you Reed, though I suppose any hopes I had of being a proper role model are pretty much over and done with." Reed took off one of his gauntlets, and ran a hand through her blond hair, a gesture of affection that was easier and more enjoyable for him than kissing. "You're a woman in love Susan, I'd be very surprise if that's not something people the entire world over can understand fairly easily. So, how do you want to get married?"

Susan sighed dramatically as she considered her options. "Isn't that just Sophie's Choice Reed? We could elope and get it over and done with inside a week, not that'll make much difference in the end, since after I give birth anyone who can do rudimentary math and knows how long a pregnancy is suppose to last will notice that things didn't line up properly. Or, I can take the time to plan out the kind of wedding I'd always like to have, but that'll take at least a couple of months, so by the time it happens I'd be waddling my way down the aisle for everyone to see, not to mention for every single recording of the event to capture just how large I'd have gotten by that point."

She just left her options hanging there as she pondered the pros and cons of each one. "Would mind if I made a suggestion? Since I am doubtlessly in part responsible for putting you in your current situation, I think it behoves me to at least try to help you deal with it." Susan chuckled in black humor. "Reed, in the end I'm the only one who's responsible for my situation. As the woman I'm the one who is suppose to be 'playing defence', you even went so far as to remind me of the fact before hand, and what did I do?

I stood on the sidelines cheering you on, waving pom poms, and doing everything but twisting my body to spell out letters. That said, it's going to take a day even stranger than any of the ones we've currently had before I don't want your opinion on an issue as important in my life as this. Besides, you are going to be the groom, right? That means what you want our wedding to be like disserves at least some consideration."

Reed nodded and coughed once to clear his throat before responding. "Well Susan, there's a phrase, 'refuge in audacity', it seems to have been one of our guiding principles ever since we've gained these powers, why not stick by it? No secret identities, no double lives, no hidden caves under ground, or some other inaccessible place, from what I understand that's hardly normal superhero operating procedure.

I get this face put back together, you plan whatever kind of wedding you want, and I don't care in the slightest if when I'm told to kiss the bride you need to lengthen your neck so that your belly doesn't get in the way. If you pick out a particular wedding dress you like I'll even make a version of it out of unstable molecules.

Susan giggled again, a smile coming to her lips. "That kind of 'audacity' I think I can get behind one hundred precent, as opposed to say we get married naked and start doing it right at the alter once its over." "It's the logical way to go about things, we realized that we were going to be a spectacle the moment we discovered we had these powers, so we decided we might as well try and shape the spectacle, rather then letting it shape us. We deal with this situation the same way."

A very long sigh left Susan's lips. "I just hope the two of us are up to the task of taking care of six children." Reed shook his head. "There's always your brother and Benjamin to keep in mind as well when your doing calculations like those." Susan knew he was right, and knew that he meant it in a way different from how she now chose to interpret it.

"Your right, the two of us are going to have to look after eight children, well least I won't have to worry about breast feeding and changing the last two." She chuckled again, and sudden a strange thought occurred to her. "Reed, do those notes of yours have any information about what effect my powers might have on my pregnancy, or vice versa?"

Reed looked back at the clipboard he still held in his gauntleted hand , then casually tossed it aside. "Well I've got two kinds of good news on that front. The first is that even though I haven't done any exact testing, I'm 99.9 percent certain that your children have inherited your elasticity. As I'm sure you'll be glad to hear unlike my guesstimate regarding the strength of our ships shielding, this one happens to be based on empirical evidence, even if it was gained outside ideal conditions."

Strength seemed to be returning to Susan's body as she managed to go from laying down to sitting up, or maybe it was just that the massive sense of overwhelming, whatever, that had left her paralysed was fading. "What evidence is that exactly?" Reed placed his hand directly on top of Susan's belly button. "Well consider just how many times in the last month you've stretched your entire body into something about as thin across as a sheet of paper, I can think of at least a dozen of them right off the bat.

There's simply no way you could have done that without unintentionally crushing our children in your womb, if it wasn't for the fact that they shared your powers. I think that's also explains the 'kinks' or whatever you've been feeling. When you've stretched your own body out a considerable distance, though nowhere near your limits of course, your children have unintentionally attempted to mirror your feat.

That sense of something within you stretching itself would make anyone feel unusual and upset, so your body pulled itself back to normal, making your growing children do the same a few moments. As ironic as it sounds, some flexibility exercises, specially tailored to your particular situation of course, would probably be just what you need to get your children used to you using your powers and your body in turn used to their reactions."

Susan sighed as she laid back down. She'd once upon a time wondered if her children would have her powers, apparently in retrospect it clearly wasn't a matter of if, they had to have them, or else they never would have survived long enough for her to notice that she was pregnant.

That thought both terrified and elated her, terrified because of what could have happened, and elated because that particular possibility hadn't come to pass. "I take it those are the two bits of good news you mentioned?" Reed shook his head. "Actually that's one bit of good news, and one explanation. The second bit of good news, well I think you would understand it best if you close your eyes and don't open them until I tell you to."

Susan decided she didn't have much to loose, and Reed so very rarely felt as playful as he evidently did at the moment, so she might as well encourage him. "Okay, but please be gentle with me." Susan closed her eyes and a few moments latter felt both of Reed's hands (he had doubtlessly taken the other gauntlet off from how warm they both felt) removing the lower portion of her outfit, then her panties before they both began to massage her vagina causing her shiver with delight.

"Reed if your trying to tell me that my being pregnant means that we can have sex whenever we've got the time, the same way we were acting when we though I was barren, I've already come to that conclusion myself." Of course even as Susan said the words she still kept her eyes closed, just in case she was wrong, which as it turned out she was. "No, just give me a few moments longer, ahh there we go, that should do the trick."

Susan opened her eyes and looked suspiciously at Reed's grinning face. "I'm still utterly clueless, what's the second bit of good news?" Reed pointed at something she couldn't see from her current position, so rather then stand up she gave her neck a good stretching so that she could see just what her lover had done to her body. It was rather blindingly obvious once she got a good look at her nether regions.

Reed had pulled and stretched her vagina until it was now wide enough for him to have easily fit his bare fist inside. "I can't promise you that it'll go that easily eight months or so from now, but if this particular test is any proof..." Susan smiled as she willed her body to stretch her pussy out to a gapping opening that would have been wide enough to swallow both of her lovers hands, before returning it back to its normal shape and size, and pulling her undergarments and pants back up.

"You're right Reed, that is good news. I won't even need any of the anaesthetics that you could obviously whip up that would keep me lucid even while dulling the pain. I'm going to give birth so easily that women the world over will be jealous! So let's see, I'm currently stinking rich thanks to all the patents and inventions you've been turning out lately, in love with a man who returns my affections, I'm unlikely to develop back problems, the idea of stretch marks is a laugh and a half, and for the cherry on top giving birth is gonna be a piece of cake.

Okay kids, I know your father could tell me all about how you don't have ears yet, but if your as smart as he is then maybe you don't need them, or maybe you'll just pick it up on the mother to child bond that we've currently got going. Either way, bring on the big breasts and the bigger belly, I can take it. You six just play nice with each other in there and be born happy and healthy okay?" There was no response of course, the kinks were not to be confused with kicks. Well no response from the children at least.

"Susan I'll get to work on designing a diet for you that'll make sure your, our children are extra healthy. The main problem with having multiple children growing up inside a woman's womb at the same time a is that they usually end up cramped for space, a problem that hopefully won't raise its ugly head in this situation, for obvious reasons." Susan laid back on that pillow again, she could only hope that listening to Reed describe all the things he was going to do and make to help her deal with her condition would prove to be the worst part of being pregnant with sextuplets. It certainly looked that way so far.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: I will try to be as accurate as reasonably possible describing Susan's pregnancy, but let the record stand I'm a writer not a doctor.

Swelling with love, chapter four: Negotiations, in which Reed Richards gets the team into and out of, trouble, right before he gets himself back into it.

About a month later Reed had to give some more news to his team, and while he was sure it would be just as surprising as Susan's pregnancy, he doubted any of them would find a silver lining to it. "I wanted to talk to all of you because I'm afraid the Fantastic Four is going broke..." There were three painful gasps and once again Johnny managed to find his voice first.

"Wait a minute, a month ago we were supposedly swimming in cash, so how is it that all of a sudden we're about to wind up in the poor house?" Reed sighed as he recalled all the relevant data he had memorized. "I suppose 'going broke' isn't quite the right way to put it. It's just that our spending is has started outstripping the amount of money we have coming in by a fairly alarming degree. That said, we can still expect the patents I've already filed to continue to pay off considerable dividends, it's just that there have been an unexpectedly high number of one time expenses over the course of the last month.

Some lot of it is my and Susan's fault: lining up the plastic surgeons I'm going to need to get my face in good working order, reserving the church that we're going to be married in, purchasing everything we're going to be needing for the wedding, the Fantasticar, things will need after our children are born, several pieces of equipment for my lab and armor, the list goes on a little longer than that but you get the idea.

Not to say it's entirely our fault, I'm not trying to point fingers. just report the data as it stands, Johnny, the dozen or so custom cars you've bought, Ben, your purchasing of several of Alica's more expensive pieces of artwork. On their own all these things aren't much, but added together they manage to effectively make a mountain out of several molehills."

Ben as expected was relatively calm about the entire matter. "Okay, so we're gonna need to buy some red ink as far as the books are concerned, I assume since you bothered to bring this to our attention you've already come up with something we can do about it, right?" Reed had, but it wasn't the worlds most pleasant solution.

"The way things stand currently, I'm afraid the best course of action would be to simply shut down he Fantastic Four for a month or two. I'll go back to working more or less full time on patents that will have immediate economic pay offs, and we basically cool our heels until our steady cash flow proves more then sufficient to deal with these one time expenses."

Susan leaned forward, her neck stretching out a few inches in the process. "So you're suggesting that if something goes wrong in the city or in the world then we should just tell whoever it's happening to that they need to deal with it themselves?"

The last thing Reed wanted to do was appear heartless in front of the mother to be of his children, especially when she had a good point. "Of course not. We'll each keep one of our unstable molecule uniforms, and obviously I'll be keeping my armor and still be in psychic reach of all three of you.

If something does go seriously wrong then we'll deal with it, but if nothing does, then it would considerably help our financial situation if we moved out of the Baxter Building, put it and some of my equipment up for rent, and lived a bit less excessively. Like I said, it'll only take about a month or so for me to straighten things out, and then life will get right back to normal around here."

Reed considered adding "or what passes for passes for normal around here" but decided against it. Johnny transformed, his metal fist ringing loudly on the table. "Yeah that's a fine idea, but you realize there are plenty of other ways that we could get the money we need, right? I mean seeing as we've been more or less saving the world as a pro bono affair, I'm sure the government would be only too glad to have us doing it on their dollar."

Reed shook his head firmly. "If we get the government involved in the team it'll be hard to get them uninvolved at a later date, not to mention they'd have access to everything I've been working on. The more people who know about a secret the less secret it is, and subsequently the greater the possibility that the wrong people will find out about it.

The Fantastic Four work best both in principle, and in practice as a group of people who have the freedom to react to situations on the go without needing to worry about governmental red tape." Ben had his own take on Johnny's idea. "Well the since as you said we're a public service, why don' we have a telethon or something? S.O.S, Save Our Superheroes. Then we'd be able to get the cash we need and it'd come only from the pockets of people who wanted us around."

Reed shook his head again. "At the moment if we decided to simply up and liquidate all of the Fantastic Four's possessions, we'd still end up walking away from the deal as multi-millionaires. Thus asking the public to help with a temporarily lack of liquid assets seems a little underhanded to me.

I know that none of us likes the idea of abandoning he Fantastic Four, even if only we're only doing from a financial standpoint, but this is the best way to deal with our problem without taking out a loan with interest of one type or another that would haunt us for years to come. This is my decision as team leader, and I'll be glad to help all of you move out. Not to mention back in when this mess has blown over."

--

"I'm starting to show a little aren't I?" As Susan asked the question aloud she casually poked her belly. It still felt perfectly stretchy just like the rest of her body, but here was a slowly building watery heaviness there that was new, if hardly unexpected. "Only so that someone who knew what they were looking for could tell." Reed sat down next to her, his left arm going over her shoulder, and his right on top of her belly.

Susan felt a somewhat perverse sense of warmth flowing through her, as if her children could feel that both of their parents were near, and it made them happy. "Guess it's a good thing since we've temporarily shut down the Fantastic Four, so that I don't need to worry about going out in public much at the moment. Of course it's only gonna get more and more obvious over time, especially if I keep wearing these same old things."

Reed leaned in slightly, the feeling of his body rubbing up against her own made her want to turn into a puddle then and there. "Susan, if that was a request for money to buy a new wardrobe, well you know how things are at the moment." Susan sighed and shook her head, a new wardrobe was currently one of the last things on her mind, she had actually been thinking more about her old one.

In retrospect, unstable molecules had more or less ruined her for ordinary clothing. The way they always fit with a comforting snugness, that particular indescribable feeling they had rubbing up against her skin, ordinary civilian clothing just couldn't compare. It didn't help that Susan was also fairly sure if Reed could produce enough of the stuff at a cheap price then he could make a killing in the maternity outfit business. After all, outfits that could keep up with Ultra Woman's elastic antics would easily be able to accommodate even the largest of baby bellies, like the one Ultra Woman was going to have in another few months.

Even her currently rather minuscule one had worried at first, but Reed said that for a woman carrying sextuplets it was perfectly par for the course. Granted, knowing that didn't help with her other problem, her normal civilian wardrobe which had been bought by a Susan Storm who always exercised, ate right, and thus kept her tummy trim, was growing a little bit more uncomfortable day by day on Susan Storm, mother of six to be. "I wasn't Reed, just reminiscing about how nice it would be to wear clothing that grew with my body again. I swear my current bra is getting so tight that its starting to mess with my circulation. Hell, we're the only ones here, might as well make myself comfortable."

Susan stretched a hand under her shirt, used it to carefully remove her bra, pulled it out, and hurled it across the room into a basket full of various articles of clothing that would need to be washed before they could be worn again. Seeing as Ben had decided (with its owner's consent) to move into Alica's place since her two story house was more space then she knew what to do with, and her brother had an apartment in town, leaving Reed and Susan the only occupants of the small house he'd been working out when he'd first come up with his plans for their flight into space.

Reed pulled back slightly, evidently at a loss for words with which to describe Susan's behavior. "That was very..." The sentence would have ended up just sort of drifting off into nothingness if its subject hadn't decided to build on it. "Yeah, I know. It's just that, I don't know, I guess I'm just feeling that since I'm going to hit rock bottom on the respectability scale once people find out how I'm pregnant even though we aren't married, little improprieties like going without a bra in the comfort of my own home don't seem to really matter much."

Reed readjusted himself, and this time both his arms went around her shoulders to come to rest over her belly. "Susan Storm your a woman in love, I'm a man in love with you, and this is the physical manifestation of that love, not something you need to be ashamed of." Susan twisted her neck around so that she could look Reed in the eye even as he sat behind her.

"I know, I'm not ashamed of it. That's sort of why I'm acting like this, because growing up I always figured that there couldn't be anything worse for me than getting pregnant without getting married. Of course that was because in my mind I always imagined the guy dumping me, leaving me with to play mother to my brother and my child. Well now its gone and happened, and astoundingly so, since I've got six of them crammed in here like sardines in a can, but it isn't so bad. I can live with it, heck I can enjoy it as long as I've got you, and you're not gonna leave me over a little thing like this are you Reed?"

As Susan asked the question she elongated her midsection wrapping herself twice around Reed, leaving their entire upper bodies twisted around so that she sat front to front of Reed even as her legs pointed in an entirely different direction than her eyes were. Of course because her outfit wasn't made of unstable molecules this meant that the section of her wrapped around Reed was bare uncovered skin, not that either of them really minded.

"Of course not Susan, I know I make mistakes from time to time, but I don't think even my slip up regarding the ships cosmic ray shielding would be a blunder comparable to leaving you." Susan tightened her "grip" pulling Reed a little closer. "Smart man, but then that hardly needs to be said. Though I'm sort of wondering what you're doing in here with me engaging in some pleasant afternoon delight, instead of in your lab."

Reed had spent most of his days in the house's small labs cooking up as many new inventions as he could to try and once again generate a solid economic bedrock upon which the Fantastic Four could be founded. "I'd be glad to show you the answer if you'd give me a bit more room to move my arms." Susan relaxed and Reed reached into one of his outfits many pockets and pulled out a letter. "I was checking the mail today and found this in it. There's a company named SM Studios that's interested in hiring us, by which I mean the entire Fantastic Four.

Apparently we'd only need to do a couple quick shots and we'll walk away from it with more then enough to make our finical woes a thing of the past. Normally I'd hardly advocate using our powers for personal gain, even in such a more or less benign way as this, but considering that the studio would be getting what it wanted as well, it seems a reasonable enough way to make ends meet. What do you think of it?"

For an answer Susan once again tightened her grip, pulling Reed in so close that he could doubtlessly feel her breasts rubbing up against him. "It sounds like a wonderful idea to me." Then Reed said a few words that she would never have expected him capable of. "That's right, before the flight you wanted to be an actress didn't you?" Those words made Susan swoon more deliriously then any mere kiss could have. "You know I love it when you remember stuff like that."

Even though he was mostly caught up in Susan's coils, Reed managed to somehow more or less return her "hug" back. "Well a husband has to be aware of that kind of thing, and everyone knows practice makes perfect. Now if you'll give me a minute, I'll go 'call' the other two and see if they're up for it." Reed's body went slack as he focused on using his mental powers.

A small part of Susan, that shameless if the bra doesn't fit then take it off, part of her began to ponder certain possibilities. Just how aware of his body was Reed while he was communicating psychically with someone else? The only way to be sure would be to test of course, maybe pull a little bit tighter, rub herself up again him, lick one of his ears then the other, maybe even... but Susan only pondered rather then actually acted on those lascivious desires. Just because she could didn't mean she had to, and it wasn't like she was exactly starved for sex all things considered.

--

"Oh yeah, this is how things are suppose to be, the Fantastic Four are back together!" "You know Gearhead you're saying that like we haven't seen each other for years instead of days, if you ask me it hasn't been long enough."

Sure enough it hadn't taken Ben and Johnny long to fall back into their old habits. That said, Ben did have a good point, they hadn't been apart that long, it had probably just felt that way since they'd been interacting with one another for just about every single day straight after forming the Fantastic Four. "Frankly I'm just glad that SM Studios is based in the city, we'd probably end up causing quite a stir trying to fly or ride a bus like this."

Of course the four were drawing a certain amount of attention heading to the necessary address, but at least the city was used to the sight of the four of them, so aside for the occasional request for an autograph they were making pretty good time. "You've certainly got a point there Susy, they don't exactly make regulation seats for guys with a wingspan." Susan couldn't help but smile, there was nothing like the company of good friends to put someone in a equally good mood, and among all the other things they were the Fantastic Four were also the very best of friends.

--

Eventually they reached the address on the letter, and luckily they didn't have any problems with either the terrain or the receptionist when it came to getting into the office of the owner of the studio. The office itself seemed pretty normal, even if it there seemed to be an overabundance of art, most of it aquatically themed. The decorating decision made plenty of sense a moment later when the owner turned around.

"Ahh the Fantastic Four, so good to see you again." At once Ben's wings tensed, Reed raised his gauntlet fists (since they had been suppose to come as they were he had decided to arrive fully dressed in his armor) Johnny went from flesh to metal and Susan used her powers to turn her hands into minuscule sledge hammers. Behind that extremely large desk was none other then Namor the Sub Mariner.

The last time the Fantastic Four had run into him, he'd been using an army of aquatic monsters to attack the city and in the end he'd only been stopped because armed with Reed's inventions Ben and Johnny had been able to hold the monsters off and distract Namor himself long enough for Susan to grab hold of the magical horn he'd been using to control his army.

"You seem to be acting extremely cordial towards us for someone who swore he'd destroy us all when we last parted company." Namor just snorted in regal contempt at Reed's words. "Please, lets not allow ourselves to get carried away by our emotions." This rang very oddly in Susan's ears, since the last time they'd met, the only thing Namor had done was gotten carried away by his emotions like a twig on the high seas.

"What happened to the part where unless I agreed to be your bride then you'd destroy every major city in the world?" Namor just chuckled as if making threats about effectively driving humanity back to the stone age had been nothing more then an overly zealous prank, like egging someone's house. "Please, I will admit when I first regained my memories I acted in a foolish impetuous manner unbefitting to a man of my status.

But now that I have had some time to consider, I realize that what's done is done, and it would be foolish of me to blame others for what can only be my fault in the end. After all, as their sovereign it was my duty to protect the citizens of Atlantis, and sadly I was found lacking. Thus I stand determined to use the fate that befell my people as a reason to strive towards establishing even stronger ties between my realm and the surface world, so that such a tragedy will never occur again."

Johnny quickly shifted out of his Mandriod form and Reed lowered his arms, but Ben still seemed sceptical. "Okay, so you want to make nice, but how exactly did you go from walking around in a speedo to apparently having cash coming out of your ears?" For an answer Namor stepped forward, opened a drawer, and pulled several somethings out, then tossed them on his desk

"With these." The things looked like a number of genuine golden coins. "Remember I am Prince of Atlantis, ruler of all that lies beneath the waves. Over the centuries countless have the been the number of your ships that have plummeted to the depths of my oceans loaded down with precious cargoes. It was a pathetically easy task for me to amass a fortune of treasures that have only become more valuable since they were last glimpsed by human eyes.

I assumed that you would be rather hesitant about believing me, which is why I wanted to have this conversation face to face, so that you might see my conviction. Now then, are you still interested in my offer?" Reed coughed slightly. "Well why don't you explain what exactly the job would entail in full first, then we'll consider the merits of it." Namor nodded firmly.

"Very well. The Fantastic Four has made itself much more open then other superheroes, but by the very nature of your occupations, when and where you will go into action is difficult to predict. Which is why my studies have determined that the public hungers for a chance to see its new guardians in action, a chance that I will give to them.

I have concocted four, challenges, one suited for each of you. The dangers are entirely mechanical of course, and should something go wrong you can be utterly assured of your safety. No script, it will be entirely as they say, method acting, and my carefully hidden cameras will capture each and every second of it. The entire matter can be dealt with in a single days worth of shooting if you are willing, so what do you say?" "You'll have your answer in a few moments."

/Okay, I'll psychically relay anything any of you send to me to the other two. So what do you three think of the offer?\ Sure enough straight away the psychic communication started flying hard and fast with Ben kicking it off. /Before we start discussing it, what do you think Reed, you're still the brains of this organizaiton after all.\ Reed somehow managed to "sigh" with only a mental voice, but then he'd had the most practice communicating telepathically.

/Well I'd like to believe him, but the last time I trusted the word of someone who was making me an offer that seemed much too good to be true it was Victor Von Doom. And while that situation ended pleasantly enough, that move was far from the smartest one I could have made.\ Johnny now threw his own two cents into the conversation.

/Well yeah, but from the way Ben told it to us, Vic was an gigantic jerk even before he went totally nuts.\ /So just for the record J2-S2 what exactly about the way this guy acted the last time we ran into him didn't say gigantic jerk to you?\ /Hey, there's a huge difference between the two, Namor used to be a superhero like us, well not exactly like us, but you get the idea.\ /So now we're gonna lead the team based on your knowledge of comicbooks?\ /Well it certainly did a dam fine job letting us throw those stupid skrulls for a loop.\

Susan shook her head sadly, the only thing worse then Ben and Johnny arguing out loud, was them doing it directly between her ears. /Okay, you two cut it out. I for one suggest that we take Namor up on his offer.\ /Why do you say that?\ Reed didn't sound accusing, just inquisitive. /Well if we don't believe in basic human decency and the ability for someone who's made bad choices realize it and subsequently make better ones, then it'd be effectively saying that humanity isn't good enough to disserve our help and protection.

I'm not saying that we should hand over our bankaccounts, and security codes to the Baxter Building to him on a silver plater, but lets at least give him a chance. We'll just keep our guards up, and if anything starts going wrong we keep in contact through Reed. Sound like a plan?\

/I've heard plenty of worse ones Susy.\ /Good enough for me sis.\ /If you're willing to give Namor the benefit of the doubt then I suppose I will as well.\ The psychic connection fell apart and Reed coughed, both to clear his throat and get his vocal chords working again. "Okay Namor, we'll take you up on your offer. So which one of us will be facing their challenge first?"

--

To Reed's surprise it turned out that he was going to be going first. Just like he said, Namor wasn't giving Reed any clues about what the job would entail, and all he'd done so far was take Reed for a walk along an otherwise unoccupied beach. "During the breif moment we spent in one another's company when last we met Susan described to me how her love was inevitable pledged to another named Reed Richards, and of the horrible fate that had befallen him. Words can not describe how glad I am to see that you once again a man of flesh and bone."

Reed's footsteps started to falter slightly. What exactly was Namor trying to do, lure him into a false sense of security? "You are not the only one to feel that particular sentiment, in retrospect they were far from the best six months of my life." Namor flashed Reed a very, very, smug smile.

"Well I am glad for a different reason. You see while you were little more then a spirit, you had an unfair advantage over me in the battle for Susan's affections, because of your pitiable condition she could do naught but remember you as more then you were. But now that you are restored to your native form, I can properly prove myself your superior."

Reed just staired at Namor, if he thought that Reed having a body would weaken his and Susan's relationship, well the Sub-Mariner couldn't have been more wrong if he'd tried at it for years. "You know what, why don't we leave the issue of which one of us Susan loves more up to her? That aside, what challenge do you have in mind for me to tackle?"

Namor clenched his hands into fists taking a single step closer to Reed. "It is not a challenge you will be able to tackle, because here and now I will defeat you in honorable combat, and my hidden cameras will record proof of my glorious victory!" Reed stood up a little straighter, in his old body he would have still come up short but in his new on he was more or less the same height as Namor.

"That's it? You just want the two of us pointlessly knock each other up and down this beach?" Namor rapped a fist to his well toned midsection. "Hardly. I will prove my superiority beyond a doubt, now then, either make a pathetic show of defending yourself, or save yourself the trouble and submit!" Reed tried to think back to the last time he'd gotten into an actual fist fight, but even his memory wasn't that good.

He just wasn't the kind, he'd been willing to be a superhero when it involved leading the other three in battle from a more or less impartial position, but this, this stood more or less directly contrary to everything that he'd ever lived for, a belief that calm rational discussion was a marked improvement over emotionally spurred violence.

So for a few precious fractions of a second, Reed was fundamentally at war with himself, then he though about what exactly Namor might be planning to do to Susan, and violence suddenly seemed like a very valid course of action. "You know I could inform Susan of what you're planning right here and now with just a quick mental message, but you're right, we should keep this between the two of us."

All pretensions of nobility fell from Namor's face leaving behind only an animalistic fury. "Excellent, have at you, Imperious Rex!" A few moments after that, Reed discovered that Namor was very, very, fast, and hit, very, very hard. Of course he'd had plenty of time to activates his armor's shield's beforehand, and luckily they managed to absorb most of the concussive force.

Most, not all, the blow still sent Reed flying at a bit over ten feet horizontally, but his armor also absorbed a considerable portion of the impact that came with his landing. Namor paused for only a moment understandably contemplating the possibility that his first blow might also be the last one thrown in the fight. However realized that the fight was still on as Reed rose back to his feet, and he charged at his armored foe again.

But Namor had inadvertently given Reed just what he wanted with that first punch, a reasonable amount of space between them. He aimed and fired the concussion beams built into his gauntlets at full power. The two streams of yellow hit Namor head on, and though it made him slide back a couple of inches, it only stopped him for about a second. Knowing that the beams had about a ten second recharging cycle after being fired at full power, Reed couldn't count on getting another shot off before Namor slugged him again, so he'd have to defend himself the old fashioned way.

He curled his hands into fists, ironically it was Susan's voice that rang in his ears as he did so, remembering what she'd said to him the first time he'd attempted the simple act as Mr. Fantastic. "Not like that Reed, if you make a fist with your fingers curled around your thumb then you're just as likely to break it as someone's face." His hands curled into to proper fists, he didn't even try to dodge Namor's punch, he just wanted to repay his opponent in kind.

It was a reasonable goal, and he was reasonably successful. Even as Namor's fist once again came into contact with Reed's body, Reed struck his own blow against the Sub Mariner's head. Reed went sailing through the air once again, but either because the blast had weakened his opponent, or just because Reed was getting used to it, the second hit didn't seem as bad as the first. He got back on his feet once again, and if this had been a regular fight he'd probably be whipping blood from his face or spitting out a tooth right about now. Thoughts like that made him very glad for the armor he was wearing.

Namor on the other hand was rubbing his face in surprise, though Reed couldn't make out so much as a bruise. "You dare to lay so much as a finger upon my face? I will make you pay for your impertinence!" Rather then resort to words, Reed let loose with another pair of full powered concussive blasts. It was instinctive thing, the rest of his mind was busy reducing this fight to a highly intricate math problem.

The force an object struck with was equal to its mass multiplied by the force that was driving it, thus a pebble moving at a fast enough speed could strike with greater force then a boulder moving at a slower one. Taking into account the armor he was wearing, he most likely outmassed his opponent, so he just needed to be concerned with the force that was diving his blows.

If he stood still and let Namor keep charging at him, Reed would always end up taking the harder hit, and while supposedly the armor's shielding system would prevent him from taking any serious harm, he could already feel his ears starting to ring slightly. So the thing to do was to get some momentum behind his own blows.

Of course much to his surprise, by the time Reed had finally reached this mental conclusion, he discovered that his body was almost halfway to Namor's which was rapidly moving toward his own. The two connected, with each other knocking the other back (the sand didn't provide much traction to either of them) but at least Reed kept his feet under him.

He made a quick mental promise to himself that he'd invest some of his free time (assuming he had any between looking after a pregnant Susan Storm, working on various inventions, and actively being a superhero) towards studying one, if not a couple different kinds of martial arts. At least the two were more or less equal when it came to skill as it turned out, since Namor apparently didn't consider fighting much beyond hitting whatever part of his opponent presented itself with his fists. Granted Reed doubted all of the Fantastic Four's foes would take such a straightforward approach to physical combat.

Reed fired off another pair of full powered blasts as they finished recharging and saw that this time around they had finally managed to actively stagger Namor. He took off running again, and this time it was Namor who was standing still when Reed plowed into him.

The Prince of the Atlantis was knocked flat on his back and Reed took a moment to catch his breath. "It seems like my 'pathetic' efforts to defend myself weren't quite so fruitless after all." At first the only response that Reed got was the sound of a wave washing over the beach, but then much to his surprise he heard Namor's voice sounding every bit as condescending as ever. "Oh really Richards? My wrath is as deep as the ocean and you have only dipped your toes in it!"

As Reed turned around, Namor hit him again, hard. He had his entire flight across the beach to figure out exactly what had just happened. Luckily he had enough data to draw on. He was so sure he'd beaten Namor, then suddenly he was back on his feet and every bit as strong as he had been at the start of the fight.

He thought back to the story Johnny had told him about how it was tossing Namor in the ocean that had let him to shake off his amnesia, was it possible that contact with salt water had physically restorative effects upon the Sub Mariner as well as mental ones? As Reed managed to clear his vision to the point that he only saw one Namor standing in front of him, he did in fact see small droplets of water clinging to his bare skin.

Which of course explained why it was that Namor had wanted to fight him here, not only was it out of the way, but it gave him a very definite homefield advantage. Reed fired off yet another blast as Namor charged at him, and once again grimaced as Namor's first slammed into him. Except that he was fighting just a bit smarter this time, evidently he had realized that sending Reed flying was doing more to help then hinder Namor's foe.

The punch came at a downward angle, so that Reed was driven toward the sand instead of sent flying. Namor quickly fell upon Reed and let lose with a torrent of blows. A tiny warning siren went off in Reed's ears, his armor's shields could only take so much of a beating in a given period of time, and he was heading towards that limit at a rather drastic pace. Luckily his gauntlets were done recharging so he fired another blast, in a perfect world it would have sent Namor flying, but though they couldn't quite manage that, at least they throw him off his stride.

Which gave Reed enough of an opportunity to strike back as he drove a gauntleted fist into Namor's gut. He followed his fist blow up with hook to the Sub Mariner's face that managed to knock him off Reed and onto the sand. The two rolled away in opposite directions and then clambered to their feet. Reed fired another blast from his concussion beams but apparently Namor had gotten the feel for them now, and managed to dodge, leaving the two with no choice but to circle one another restlessly. Not that Reed minded, circling was exactly what he wanted, since it would let him position himself between his opponent and the source of his renewed strength.

Once they had achieved the position Reed desired he stood still, and Namor quickly realized why. He couldn't get passed Reed without opening himself up to attack, so rather then try to think up some clever stratagem, he decided to try and go straight through Reed.

As Namor took off Reed started running towards him as well, though Mr. Fantastic wanted to fight defensively, if he was hit hard enough to getting knocked back into the water would doubtlessly cause the fight to take a very unpleasant turn. The two traded blows and both of them were knocked a few inches back. It continuned in that way for a length of time that Reed couldn't be sure of.

Namor kept attacking too hard and fast for Reed to uncurl his fists, and the two kept trading blow after blow after blow. Eventually they found themselves both panting, struggling to so much as lift them arms enough to strike the other. With his eyes cast on the ground Reed had a perfectly good view of he way a newly arrived wave carried salt water right past him at leg height (his shields of course diverted the stuff so that it couldn't damage his armor's complicated mechanical systems) and then against his very fervent wishes washed over Namor's feet at ankle height.

A cruel grin came to Namor's face as he straightened up a little more, clearly it would have taken full body submersion to have a truly miraculous affect, but this one was easily large enough, and they both knew it. Reed Richards was not the sort of man who cursed by nature, but this certainty seemed like exactly the kind of situation that called for profanity. "Oh fornicating feces."

--

"As always the Sub-Mariner is victorious!" Namor dropped his defeated foe a safe distance inland. For someone who supposedly had the heart of a sage instead of a warrior Reed Richards had put up far too admirable a battle for Namor to simply allow the waves to claim his unconscious body.

Besides, Namor was a man of his word, he had promise the Fantastic Four that none of them would come to permanent harm, and indeed they would not, in fact before the day was through a certain member of it might have a considerable amount to gain from the day's trials. He had made sure to refresh his strength once the battle had been concluded and very soon Susan Storm would behold him at his very best. Even if he was a ruler without a people to call his own, he would not be without a queen for much longer!

AN: Still hoping and praying for reviews...


	5. Chapter 5

AN: Before I start I'd just like to thank MarvelousMariaah for her review.

Chapter five: Choices. In which Susan Storm accepts and rejects certain offers.

Susan sighed mightily as she sat alone in the lavish dressing room that Namor had prepared for her. She took a few moments and brushed her hair for what was probably the dozenth time. She'd gotten it right on her first try, so now it was less about looking pretty and more about trying to calm her nerves . Yes before she'd gained her powers she'd wanted to be an actress, she'd even been in a few minor productions, on paper this should be perfect a combination of her two favorite professions, acting and being a superheroine, so why did she feel like a giant bundle of nerves?

Hell the answer to that was obvious enough, she'd never been a leading lady before and there was no understudy, no one who could do the job if she couldn't. It didn't help that she had absolutely no clue what her part was going to involve her doing. Well if Namor wanted to get a raw reaction out of her, he was going to get one that was for sure. Though all the same Susan deeply wished that she could have talked to one of the others about what they'd had to do, then at least she'd have some kind of clue about what would be needed of her, not to mention know how well they'd done.

If it'd been easy for them, then she'd be sure she could handle her challenge with equal ease, and by the same token if they'd had problems, then could be sure she wouldn't look too bad in comparison. A knocking at the door derailed her train of thought, but she quickly stretched out an arm over to open it. She'd been hoping that it might be one of her teamates, but it was Namor instead.

Susan took a deep breath and tried to psyche herself up mentally, she was a big important famous powerful superheroine, and it wasn't at all obvious that she was pregnant with sextuplets. "So I take it that its time for my scene?" There was a strange smile on Namor's face. "It is indeed time for your true inner beauty to shine Susan, but it shall be for my eyes alone."

Several hairs perked up on the back of her neck, this was quickly turning out even odder then she'd expected. "What are you talking about?" Namor stepped forward his smile turning into a full blown smirk. "I mean Susan that I have returned from defeating my rival for your affections, and now I intend to claim my prize." Susan had heard of actor director conflict before, but she'd never expected it to be quite this literal. "You did what?"

Namor just shrugged, extending an arm forward as if he expected Susan to take it. "You need not waste your tears on my fallen foe dear Susan, for the Sub Mariner's mercy is as great as his strength. After proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was the better man I left him otherwise unharmed." Knowing that Reed was okay helped Susan's generic sense of dread to transition into a very focusing sense of rage in the span of about five seconds.

"So you think physically assaulting my current boyfriend, is going to make me want to run away with you? Namor, I'll admit you have several very positive qualities, but your comprehension of how a healthy relationship is suppose to work needs a lot of improvement. So let me make this EXTREMELY clear. I am going to give my affections and fall in love with the man I want to, and while I'll admit that there are things someone could do to make me interested in them, there is nothing you, or anyone else in the world can do to force me to fall in love with them. Got it?"

Sadly the Prince of Atlantis was as obstinant as he was backwards about romance. "Bah, once I take you to my home beneath the waves and show you the glories of my kingdom you will be only too willing to beg to be my queen!" Susan had taken just about all she was going to take of this conversation. "Namor, you've already given me more then enough reasons to make you regret coming in here, I'd suggest you leave before I get any more."

But Namor didn't take well to subtle hints, or even out and out veiled threats. He grabbed hold of Susan's right arm, that insolent smirk still firmly in place. "How appropriate that the woman who will be my queen hath such grand fury in defence of those she cares about, but I will show you a world and people truly worthy of your affection."

On one hand, Susan could just slip away from Namor, after all, what was he going to do to stop her? But on the other hand, well that just conveniently happened to be the hand that Namor had grabbed without her permission. She wasn't sure how much pain she could put him in, but she was darn sure going to try and make Namor regret ever harming Reed and being foolish enough to tell her about it!

Her hand shortened and easily escaped Namor's grip, and then her midsection shot out with the intention of binding his body with her own. "All right Namor, that's the way you want it, that's the way you'll get it. Because the only reason I'd want to touch your body with mine right now is to pummel you into submission, and I'd sure as hell want a layer of unstable molecules between your skin and mine while I do it.." Unfortunently Namor was apparently going to be that easy a fish to catch, he calmly flexed his muscles and slid right out of Susan's coils.

"Wonderful! The Sub-Mariner has many times done battle with mightier serpents, but never more comely ones. Luckily the powers of each and every creature of the ocean are at my command, such as the slipperiness of an eel!" A small part of Susan couldn't help but wonder if Namor was aware that the "SM" in his company's title could have stood for things other then Sub Mariner. But that was beside the point, if she couldn't put the squeeze on Namor then she'd have to find some other way to get her point across.

Luckily after eight months or so of having her powers, she'd more or less developed a pretty standard fighting style, and if one move didn't work she moved onto the next most appropriate one for the situation. She threw a punch at Namor stretching her arm out to cross the length between them and making her fist momentarily larger then the rest of her body.

Sadly she'd learned pretty quickly that she couldn't increase the mass of her fists as easily as she did the size, so while she would have liked to punch Namor with half a ton worth of rubbery flesh, in reality it was probably less then a hundred pounds all things considered. Even worse, just like she'd expected, her punch had barely phased him.

"Glorious simply glorious, the more I sweat, the sweater my final victory will be. Your elastic body is not only quite exquisite, but also makes you a powerful force in battle, though nowhere near mighty enough to defeat your future king!" Namor flew right at Susan (Reed would probably have a field day figuring out exactly how Namor could fly, at least Ben's wings were the right scale for a human body) and wrapped his arms around her midsection.

Before she could slip away, he hurled her across the room. Try as she did, Susan wasn't able to curl into a ball fast enough, and the impact left her momentarily looking like a two dimensional poster of herself hanging on the wall. As she started to resume her normal shape, Namor crossed the distance between them, and wrapping his arms around her, shaping and molding her body even as she tried to do he same.

Before she knew it, Susan found herself rolled up into what amounted to more or less an oversized blue sleeping bag. Namor planted a foot firmly on top of her body like an explorer claiming a particular island in the name of his kingdom. "Though not as fetching as your normal form, I do believe this one should make you more than docile enough for the grand journey we're about to embark on."

That was yet one more additional reason to throw on the overflowing pile of explanations for why she preferred Mr. Fantastic over the Sub-Mariner. Yes it felt a little overly melodramatic (even for her) when Reed told her that he felt she was equally attractive no matter how she stretched, and she privately doubted that there was any way he could possibly mean it, but all that aside, damn if it didn't feel good to hear him say it.

"You're wrong on both counts Namor!" Susan's entire body was elastic, no matter what shape Namor forced her into she would always be cable of striking back a him. A part of what had probably once been her back shot out like a living lance and slammed quite solidly into a certain portion of Namor's anatomy that his posture had made a remarkably inviting target.

Sure enough her blow left even the Prince of Atlantis reeling backwards and before he got his bearings Susan had unfolded herself and returned her body to its normal appearance. Namor's voice came out just a little bit higher pitched then it previously had, but Susan would have felt more secure about how much she had achieved if he'd had fallen to the floor, or at least grasped his wounded "ego" in pain.

"See how you have been corrupted by the people of this vile surface world? Such a honorless blow hardly befits a woman like you." "Considering how nefariously you lured my friends and here taking advantage of our financial problems, it'll take a lot more then one hit below the belt to make me feel like I'm the most devious person in the room."

Susan didn't sigh profusely, such a thing didn't befit a superheroine in her current situation. That said, she certainly felt like doing it, this was apparently going to be a very long fight, her elastic limbs let her hit harder then a normal human could, but nowhere near as hard as she'd need to if she wanted to knock some sense into her over amorous opponent. Luckily if Namor had some easy way of subduing Susan, he hadn't used it yet, and if Reed wasn't seriously hurt then sooner or latter he and the others showed up here to aid her.

Ultra Woman felt a smirk of her own working its way onto her lips, and she let it come. Since she and Namor were apparently stalemated, and she had time on her side, all she had to do was keep him occupied, and that was a task she was quite sure she could handle.

"How wonderful you are, I will temper your unwieldily spirit like a proper husband and in time you will make a most dutiful wife." "I will be a most dutiful wife before long, but not yours!" Susan jumped, curled her body into a ball, and began to bounce rapidly around the confines of the room, hoping to somewhat confuse her opponent by making him try and keep up his eyes on her as she careened about the room.

It worked pretty well, even she wasn't too sure of where her next bounce would take her, so there was precious little chance that Namor would be able to properly keep track of her. Sure enough, she soon managed to work her way into the exactly the situation she wanted, bouncing straight at Namor's back. She unfurled herself and this time didn't just wrap around Namor for the neck down, instead she curled her body into a blue sphere that totally encased his body.

Then Susan yanked her head inside the sphere so that she could "look" at Namor, though it was impossible to see anything in the utter darkness that she had confined him in. "There, it doesn't matter how speedy, slippery, or strong you are, you can't punch your way out of me. So go ahead struggle, you're only use up all your oxygen that much sooner.

As it turned out, Namor could have taught her brother a few things about acting like a spoiled disobedient child. "Hah! I have even more power at the command of my finger tips then you could conceive! If the slipperiness of an eel will not avail me, then I will just have to see how well you endure the electric sting of a jellyfish." There was a spark in the darkness and then it happened.

Susan let out a yelp of surprise and the sphere of her own flesh that she'd created to entrap Namor fell away, it felt like she'd just taken a pair of tasers in the gut. As the Sub-Mariner blinked his eyes clear, once again getting used to the presence of light he found his female opponent laying apparently unconscious on the ground. "In all my years there have been countless males foes who would have loved devoutly to have put up as magnificent a struggle against me as you have. Once the two of us are joined there will be no power above or below the waves that can hope to stand against us!"

Susan snapped her eyes open and acted while Namor was surprised for that one precious moment. Her legs stretched upwards and wrapped themselves around Namor's arms. She twisted her limbs and hurled Namor upwards, using her elastic body to go from horizontal to vertical without ever needing to get her legs underneath her.

Instead she simply increased the length of her midsection and snake like balanced on that "tail" delivering a powerful punch to Namor's face as he fell back down. She doubted it harmed him much more then any of the blows that had come before it, but at least since he didn't have his feet on the ground that one did knock him a considerable distance.

In fact he ended up slamming directly into the bookcase which someone had decided to include in the room for reasons Susan's couldn't comprehend (unless it was to serve as a symbol of Namor's opulence) which collapsed on top of him as he fell to the floor. Susan breathed a heavy sigh of relief, she'd come up with that plan on the fly and that electric jolt was still making her see stars every other moment leaving her with no desire to experience a second one.

"There, now will you do us both a favor and behave?" She hadn't been able to keep her voice from sounding slightly forlorn and indeed it proved a quite rhetorical question. "Bah, you think mere metal and paper will be enough to confine the prince of the seas? Imperious Rex!"

As Namor utter his battle cry he flexed his mighty muscles and broke free from his monetary confines. However no sooner had the sight of him rising to his feet made Susan long for a chance to sink to her own knees, than a beam of yellow energy slammed into Namor's chest knocking him back to the ground. "I hate to dig up a tired old saying, but you're starting to look like a fish out of water to me Namor. That blast was only at three fourths power and from one gauntlet, how would you like it if I let lose with both barrels set on full power?

Because I guarantee that if you try to lay so much as finger on Susan again, and I'll do it before you can blink." Susan turned slightly and saw Reed in only slightly dented armor standing in the doorway of the dressing room. She once again had to resist the urge to let her legs go rubbery, but this time it wasn't because she felt tired.

Not to mention if she'd been a little more clear headed (or maybe a little less) it would have been rather funny, they'd come here to film a movie, since Reed's arrival doubtlessly had a cinematic quality to it. Namor for his part made motions as if he was considering pushing himself to his feet, but then lay still. "Very well then, I am bested. This far from my native kingdom I can't hope to compete with the power of your machines."

Reed shook his head as he kept his gauntlets pointed in Namor's direction. "Wonderful, then right about now would make for a great time for you to swear on your honor that you'll never try and use force to gain Susan's affections. Because we surface dwellers have a word for that particular action, and thinking about it is making it very hard for me not to keep blasting you until you go sailing through that wall behind you, and I might not even stop them."

Namor let out a rather pathetic moan rolling over so that he could create a direct line of sight between his eyes and theirs'. "Susan, what can this man possibly give you that I can't?" As part of her answer Susan walked over to Reed and leaned against him, half seductively, half just for the reassurance that he was indeed there, and she wasn't having a hallucination brought on by that electric shock.

Indeed he was there, an the support his body gave her helped Susan relax, somewhat. It still didn't change the fact that even though her powers helped her do a great many things, disposing of adrenaline the moment she didn't need it wasn't one of them, and if there was one thing she had learned from her brother, it was how adrenaline could make you do stupid things.

"You want to know something that Reed can give me that you can't Namor? Reed can make me feel like the most important thing in his life, and all you've ever offered to make me is the most beautiful jewel in your crown. Besides, love isn't something you can just schedule, order, or control, sometimes it happens for no clear reason at all, and guess what?

I love Reed Richards with all my heart, and if you want me to provide you with proof of that, then I'll need about thirty seconds to get undressed, a full minute to get Reed out of his armor, at which point so help me I will make love to him right here, right now, and I can do that with him anytime I like because I'm already pregnant with his children so it's not like I can screw up my life any more by having lots and lots of sex with the man who is some day going to be my husband!

Is that what I need to do to get the message through your skull that you and I just aren't happening Namor? Go ahead, name a position. and as long as Reed willing, I'll do it. If you're drawing a blank I could just start naming some of our favourites and when you hear one that sounds interesting tell me to stop. Because if that is what it'll takes to make all this clear as crystal to you, that's just what I'll do!"

There was complete and utter silence in the room for at least a full twenty seconds while everyone (including Susan) took some time to consider the full ramifications of her words. "Oh by the way, now would be a great time to reassure me that there aren't any sort of recording equipment in here which just heard me say all that...

Because if there are, then I think I'm just gonna go slink off, find a crack in the wall, and not come out for a month, or maybe two, or possibly three, or hey why don't I just stay in here till I go into labor?" Thankfully things took a small turn for the better at that point. "Just as I told you, what went on in here was intended to be for my eyes alone. You're pregnant?" Susan looked both ways as if she'd be able to easily spot any hidden cameras that Namor might have set up in the dressing room.

"Yes, with six kids that's why I'm already sort of starting to show even though I'm only two months along. For the record, the entire having sex with Reed right here and now, that was one hundred percent my hormones talking." There was another very long pause.

"May I feel?" "Fine, but you do anything more then that and the two of us will smack you so hard you'll land in the Atlantic Ocean and won't stop skipping till you reach Europe." Namor slowly rose to his feet, and then for just the shortest moment he placed his hands on Susan's belly before withdrawing it, with a most surprise look on her face.

"Water..." Susan didn't have much trouble guessing that he was referring to the contence of that small bludge in her midsection. "Among other things." Susan had to hand to Namor, he somehow manage to look almost as self mortified as she had after realizing that she'd offered to have sex with Reed in front of another man.

"I didn't suspect, and I tell you now that had I known I never would have acted in such a manner I realize there is precious little I can do to make up for my folly, but a tenfold increase in your payment would at least start things off on the right foot I think. Susan, understand that I never meant to harm any of those you cared about, only show you who was the better man, but now I must admit much to my chagrin that obviously he already stands before me."

Namor actually did sound pretty sorry, and this wasn't exactly a conquer the entire world or even release an veritable flood of sea creatures on the city like the plot he had pulled out of his speedo the first time around. So figuring that she'd made enough rash and foolish mistakes for one day, Susan looked to Reed. "What do you think dear?"

"So long as Ben and Johnny return unharmed I'll consider what went on in here a private matter between the three of us, this time. But try and come between us again, I'll find a way to make you regret it, trust me, I'm an engineer: if I don't already have a weapon in my arsenal that will bring you to your knees, I'll just keep inventing things till I find something that does."

--

Susan looked at the small white piece of paper that was all they had to show for everything they'd been put through today. Well maybe it wasn't such a small thing when you took into account exactly what it represented. "That's a lot of zeroes." Reed calmly returned the Sub-Mariner's check to the pocket he had pulled it from and smiled. "Not really, I mean there are fewer of them then you are years old." Scientific notation, only Reed would bring that up at a time like this

After the dust had settled Namor had written the check and promptly handed it over. Ben and Johnny weren't back from their respective tasks yet (Namor said they didn't need to worry about it but neither of them planned to let him get all that far out of their sight until after they'd retuned) so the were simply relaxing in one of the many trailers that after all did exist for the benefit of "the talent" as the were called in situations like this one. "Reed since you're the one responsible for our handling our finical needs you may be used to seeing numbers that large, but I'm not.

Truth be told, I still have this vicarial gut reaction telling me that a hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money and that's..." "That." Reed said the word calmly and Susan nodded, indeed "that" was certainly one way of describing just how much money Namor had oh so calmly dropped straight into their laps. Clearly the Fantastic Four would not have to worry about their coffers running dry any time soon.

"Well I suppose we should be grateful that it turned out so well, but still I don't think I'm ever going to be able to properly wrap my head around how exactly Namor's mind works, assuming it does. I slammed him around till we'd torn up half the room and he still didn't get that I wasn't interested. But then the moment he found that I'm pregnant he's all smiles apologies and acting like a perfect gentlemen. It's like he's a character out of some play set in the middle ages."

Reed coughed slightly. "Believe it or not Susan, you more or less described my own thoughts on the issue. Johnny pointed out that he'd apparently been suffering with a bout of amnesia for quite a while, and since his appearance hasn't change since World War Two, we've got no way of telling exactly how old he really is.

Combine that and what we do know, and it's not hard to see how one thing lead to another. Not that it excuses his behavior of course, just explains it. After all, there once was a time when marriage was considered the only 'true' way to establish the paternity of children. But now, well let's just say that considering the sheer speed that human technoligy and culture have changed over the course of this century it's almost barley even a surprise that superpowers have started cropping up among us for one reason or another.

We seem to be doing everything else about ten times as fast as we used to, so maybe we've suddenly shifted into the fast lane where evolution is concerned as well without even realizing it." Susan sighed and allowed her own midsection to elongate and intertwine itself around Reed's. "I'm sure it's a very fascinating subject and all darling, but I've sort of had a rough day and right now, all I really want to do is relax. For the record I'm not tired, I'm just feeling a little overextended at the moment."

Reed playful poked a finger into the portion of her body that was wrapped around his. "Well Sue I don't want to lecture, but do you think this might have something to do with why you feel overextended? That said, if you feel like you need to relax, I can think of one thing that might help you do it even better the pure bed rest." Susan's entire body perked up slightly. "Really, what would that be?"

Reed calmly gestured towards one of the trailer's door, and Susan knew that this one didn't lead outside. "I know it's rather small compared to the ones back at the Baxter Building, but I thought maybe the two of us might be able to squeeze inside an enjoy a nice hot shower together."

Susan made sure that her voice left absolutely no doubt that she was mightily offended. "Reed Richards I'm surprised at you!" Those six words spoken, she continuned on in much more languid tones before he had a chance to even start spluttering an apology. "I mean you're the one who told me that its never too soon to start taking the fact that I'm pregnant into account. That means spending lots of time on my feet when there are other alternatives is right out, like showers for example.

Now maybe a nice soothing bath once we get to the Baxter Building, that I could see as good use of my time. Not to mention since even an elastic girl can have trouble scrubbing her entire body at times, I probably could use your help." Reed just sort of laid their looking at her and she laid there looking at him.

Then they both shook hands. "Till then Susan, till then." A which point Susan closed her eyes and rested her head down on the chest of the man she loved. It was far from the world's softest pillow, but it was damn near the world's most comforting one.

--

Eventually Ben and Johnny did come back form their shoots, Johnny describing how he'd taken on a cyclopse and Ben how he'd outflown a giant bat that apparently had been in the mood for a human sized Dragonfly, but both of them were rather mollified when they saw just how much they were going to get paid for their work. Of course neither Reed nor Susan told them about Namor's indiscretions, since they were both sure it would only lead to one more knock down, drag out, property damage causing fight then they really needed.

So before the day was truly out, they'd cashed Namor's check, moved their stuff back into the Baxter Building, and now to a strange mix of anticipation, horror, surprise, and delight it seemed like Susan was intent to follow up on her words. "You really want to do this?" The first response Reed got to that question was Susan calmly pulling off the top half of her uniform. "Of course, like you said it'll be relaxing, it'll be fun, and their certainly is enough room in there for both of us. I'm sure there are plenty of married couples who take bathes together all the time.

So all we're really doing is getting a little head start on matrimonial bliss, it won't be the first one." Reed found it hard to argue with her logic, and doubly hard to properly express his emotional stance on the issue. After all, the large alabaster bathtub in Susan's (in their) bathroom clearly looked like it could easily fit two people, even if neither of were elastic.

All that said, it still didn't change the fact that Reed couldn't help but feel a little squeamish. He wasn't sure why he felt that way, upon closer inspection the idea of taking a bath together with Susan felt somehow dirtier then simply (or even complexly) having sex with her, but it did. So Reed Richards did what he always did when faced with a conundrum, he thought it out.

It was probably the sheer decadence of the idea that got under his skin. Sex was required for the propagation of the species, but in theory (not that Reed care to practice this theory) two people could have sex with each other while still dressed from the belly buttons upwards. Of course nakedness was also required for bathing, and bathing was an important part of hygiene which was required for survival of that particular member of the species, but bathing together, that was the sticking point. For sex to achieve its purpose two participants were required, bathing could be done just fine alone, and that was feeling a bit outside his element.

The entire idea of idea of bathing together didn't seem like it could possibly serve any purpose other then simple gratification . Granted having sex with a pregnant woman could possibly have any real 'purpose' beyond pleasure either, but what his mind knew and what his body felt were two very different things. To his surprise, Reed realized that while he'd been figuring all this out, his body had been working on autopilot, removing his own garments.

As of course had been Susan, and when he saw the smile on her face as she stood their in just her bra and panties, it finally clicked. Susan was pregnant, with more then one (in fact it was more then five) children, a delicate and treacherous condition even for a superheroine. Not for nothing was Reed Richards considered one of the smartest men ever born, over the course of the last month even between several other demanding tasks he'd managed to find the time to do considerable research on the subject of multiple child pregnancies from twins right on up to ones that involved more children then even Susan was carrying.

One point that nearly ever single one had hit was the power of positive thinking, that quite often children were only born as healthy, a pregnancy only as easy, as their mother thought it would be. Therefore whatever kept Susan happy (and was within reason of course) was important both sake of her and their children. Secured with the knowledge that he was acting out of concern for the seven lives he cared most about in the world instead of (or at least in addition to) raw animal desire, Reed calmly finished stripping himself naked and confidently ran a finger along Susan's cheek.

"You look even more beautiful then you did yesterday." Susan blushed but managed a fairly professional job of removing her undergarments before she turned her attention to the bathtub giving Reed a perfect view of her backside. He just staired at it transfixed and just as Susan was starting to wrap her hand around one of the levers controlling flow of water into the tub, she suddenly straightened up with a small half inch jump.

"Geeze Reed, you sure do shift gears quickly. One moment I'm thinking I'll need to undress you myself, the next you're not even waiting until we get in the tub to start!" For one of the few times in his life Reed was utterly and completely confused. "What are you talking about?" As she spoke Susan turned around placing her right hand to top of her corresponding ass cheek. "Somebody in here just slapped my ass, it if wasn't you then we must have some kind of perverse poltergeist hanging around the building..."

Reed looked a his own hands for a moment, quite certain they hadn't moved anywhere near his lover's backside (however much he might have been thinking about doing just that) and then he finally the obvious conclusion occurred to him. "I think that actually was me Susan, it just wasn't truly intentional. You know how I'd been saying my psychic powers have been growing slightly stronger, in the sense of back towards what I considered normal when I didn't have a body?

Well I'm afraid to say that I think I my telekinesis just kicked back in, and managed to do so in the most embarrassing way possible." Susan giggled and Reed couldn't help but wonder if he would have preferred her reaction to have taken the form of vexation instead. "While I'll agree this is going to be one more of many stories we're never going to be telling our children, but if you think that was the most embarrassing way that your telekinesis could have remanifested itself, then you just aren't thinking hard enough Reed.

You could have groped one of my breasts, played with my pussy, hell we could have been some place public when all of a sudden you literally start undressing me with your mind." Reed's blushed so deeply that he was sure even with his disfigured face it was still quite visible. "Good point." Susan nodded twisting her body back around. "Yeah, if there's one thing that going from worrying about being infertile one moment and cursing myself for being so dam fertile the next has taught me, it is that every situation has its ups and downs. Now then, why don't we get to work enjoying ourselves?"

She climbed into the bathtub and a moment later Reed climbed in after her. Susan switched on the hot water lever and favored him with a smile. "If it gets too hot let me know, my body has been sorta weird about temperature since I got my powers, I've started really enjoying all hot water baths." The water filling the tub diverted around her body and began to work its way towards his.

"Well if you remember, back before I made some foolish comments comparing you to a certain type of single celled organism that I won't reiterate, we all mostly thought of your powers being comparable to having a body made of rubber right?" Susan nodded and Reed continuned calmly. "Well among its many interesting properties, one of the most unique is that rubber can store energy thermally.

The practical upshot of which, is that while under most normal conditions it is elastic, but if you lower its temperature enough rubber becomes extremely brittle. Which might be an explanation for why you've been showing a slightly larger aversion to low temperature environments then I remember you having before you got your powers, like wanting as small a time frame between getting out of bed naked and getting dressed as possible. Meanwhile in most of its forms rubber's melting point is reasonably far above the evaporating point of water. So assuming your body works at least partially along those lines, it explains why you'd enjoy all hot water baths without feeling like your skin is getting scalded."

As the hot water came into contact with Reed's body he felt his manhood stirring to firmness, granted it could have just been the fact that he was currently sitting there with a naked Susan Storm in front of him. In fact after considering that simple fact for a moment, the better question suddenly became why had it taken him so long to get erect in the first place? "You do enjoy thinking about my body in all kinds of ways don't you Reed?"

She said it half teasingly, half seductively, and Reed could perfectly understand both halves. It would be hard to deny that Susan's current condition begged for him to study it, just like any other scientifically unexplained occurrence, and also happened to make it possible for them to have sex in ways he'd never even dreamed possible. "I suppose I do, though obviously some of my more extreme theories will have to wait until our children are born to test, if even then.

For example, would prolonged exposure to high enough temperatures cause you to 'melt' into a helpless puddle temporarily? And at the other end of the spectrum there is the entire exposing you to extremely low temperatures. Granted I'd only do what you felt comfortable doing of course.

Some of them I'm not even comfortable with taking beyond the drawing board stages, like exposing you to cold temperatures till it noticeably effects your powers, striking you with enough blunt force to make you shatter, then warming you up again to see if the pieces can meld themselves back together without suffering permanent damage. I suppose potentially lethal ideas like those are what cell cultures are for, though if it did work the way I described, it would open some intriguing new possibilities.

For example, if you cut a starfish in half you can wind up with two completely different entities, could your powers replicate the feat? Of course if they can't you could die, which is why I'll consider it a theory and leave it there." The water level was starting to rise now, though Reed's penis was still far from fully submerged. "Which is good because if it did work I'm sure somebody would promptly suggest a threesome, and I being the jealous type want to keep you all to myself.

You know, it's a good thing you don't have these powers Reed..." That got his attention even more then her naked body was capable of. "Why do you say that?" Susan leaned forward stretching out her neck slightly and kissed Reed's chest, since she knew she was supposed to stay away from his face. "Simple, your powers are in your brain and as much as you love to do research, I don't think you're crazy enough to try and cut open your own skull and play around with what's inside.

But my powers are expressed in my body, if you had them then you'd probably lock yourself in your lab and not come out till you'd formulate a perfect scientific theory for how it's possible to do ever single thing my powers let me do. I on the other hand just figure the reason its called a superpower is because where they're concerned you might as well just hang the laws of physics and any other supposedly universal constants I'm violating."

Reed couldn't help himself. "The law of conversation of mass springs pretty readily to mind. I mean that's suppose to be an absolute given, not even atomic blasts can create or destroy mass, they just do a very good job of rearranging it. Then I saw you stand on a scale and as you stretch the numbers go from..."

Susan cut him off before he could finish. "Reed honey, here's another quick law that's a lot more immutable then conversation of mass apparently is, never mention what a pregnant woman's weight is, or used to be." Reed coughed switching the tracks his train of thought was travelling upon before continuing. "And I see the numbers go down. I've felt it also, I mean without my armor I can lift you with both arms, but when you curl yourself up into a ball I can easily pick you up in one hand.

That's got to be a change in mass, particularly because given density is mass over volume, if compacting yourself into a ball should was a change only in volume but not mass, it would making your body the equivalent of an cannon ball, instead of an incredibly light sphere of flesh." Susan just smiled back at him. "Like I said, if you had my powers then you'd never stop playing with yourself... Wow, today is just my day when it comes to saying things without thinking through all the implications isn't it?"

"Studying myself would probably be a less ambiguous way of saying it, but I grasp your point." Reed was barely even feeling the heat of the water now, he was too busy thinking about other things. "Yeah, but this way things are just right between us. After all, a girl's got to have ways to get her man's attention, and you're too much the gentlemen for a bared leg to work, luckily I've been having more luck with my elastic ones lately, don't you agree?"

As Susan spoke Reed could feel the way her legs pushed the water in the tub about as they circle around him and then pulled him in close so that their bodies were nearly rubbing up against one another. "You know Susan, I think you were given your powers for more important tasks than seducing me." Susan's smile became even wider.

"Of course, the real reason I got them was so that I could safely bring your six children into the world... yeah, I know, fight evil, protect the common man and common woman, save the world, that sorta stuff. But if we've got time left over once we're done with being heroes, well it's not like there's anything that wrong with getting the most out of what we've got." Reed leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her.

You're really happy aren't you?' Susan wriggled slightly but consented to be held and embraced. "Well why shouldn't I be? Okay I'm pregnant and unmarried, but that'll be fixed before too long. Right?" He felt a slight tensing of her body as she asked the question and he began to slowly work his arms up and down her back once again feeling it shift about as he applied pressure. "You know it Susan. But on a lighter note, I think today should have done a pretty good job of proving that your best days as a superheroine aren't behind you."

Susan twisted again slightly, and this time she did slip out of his grip. He suspected that it was more so that the two of them could have a "proper" conversation then as a none to subtle physical clue that she wasn't interested. "Heh, I guess I did do a pretty decent job today: didn't get knocked out, didn't get captured, didn't get stripped down to my underwear, didn't get mind controlled and used against other three members of the team..." Reed drew slightly closer to her as he put his own finishing touch on that list. "Did manage to last longer in a stand up fight with the Sub Mariner then Mr. Fantastic did." Susan sighed sending yet more ripples through the soothingly warm water.

"Well yeah, but it still felt like Namor had me on my last legs when you showed up. I might have been able to keep him busy longer, but in the end you were the one who was able to throw the knockout, or at least the knockdown punch." Reed leaned closer and delicately stroked a finger along Susan's chin. "Well if anything, that just goes to show what a great team we make. You stay in the fight and throw an enemy off balance then I hit them hard and fast enough to leave them floored."

Susan shrugged her shoulders the water making the gesture take place a little slower then normal. "Okay you're right. But still I can't help but wish that just once I'd get to throw the last punch." Reed once again managed to slip his arms around her back. "Now honestly Susan what kind of example would you be setting for our children if you went around flooring people at the drop of a hat? A proper woman should be of a more serene temperament."

With a speed that surprised him, Reed discovered just how laughably easy it was for Susan to reverse his grip, leaving him wrapped up in her instead of the other way around. "Well then I guess I'm just an improper sort of woman. Something about the entire getting knocked up before being married made me suspect it, now we can be sure of it.

On the upside, I can think of at least a dozen things that a proper woman would never even allow herself to dream of doing that seem like a lot of fun to me." "Susan?" Her words came in a deep imploring voice. "Yes Reed?" "If one of us doesn't turn the water off soon the tub is going to start to overflow." A look of tremendous irritation crossed her face, but only for only the moment it took for her to extend her neck, warp it around the necessary lever, and yank it back into the off position.

"Any other little niceties I need to take care of before I can have your undivided attention?" "Not a one." Granted even though they had turned off the constant flow of water, by the time they were done the floor still managed to end up pretty wet.

--

Three days after that bath, late one night Reed told Susan that he had a gift for her in his lab, and she only too eagerly followed along, even going so far as to wrap one of her arms around her eyes as an impromptu blindfold while he helped guide her to his lab thanks to a gentle grip on her other arm.

Eventually they reached their destination. "Ready to see your present?" "You bet, I can't wait to see what incredibly well thought out invention you've come up with to spoil me this time." She felt Reed adjusting her stance slightly so that she was looking in a different direction then she previously had been.

"Well then, feel free to look when ready." Susan snapped her arm back to normal and was less then impressed with what she saw. "It's a rock." It was indeed a rock, a very large flat rock that seemed to serve no other purpose then to take up space in Reed's lab. "Yes, but then so are diamonds when you get right down to it. And while this is hardly a proposal, I think you'll find that it is a very nice rock to have around. You see that conversation we had in the bathtub got me thinking.

Since you enjoy warmth, I thought having your own personal hotrock might help you relieve some of the stresses of pregnancy, superheroics, and everything else life seems to unfairly force onto your shoulders." Susan carefully studied the obsidian colored stone, though she still couldn't determine it's purpose. "So what does it do?" Reed just smiled at her. "It's warm, that's what it does, though considering it's current temperature is actually 105 degrees Celsius, it just like you, might be more aptly described, as hot."

Susan was amazed at how flawlessly Reed blended that relatively base compliment into his speech without managing to make it sound the least bit unprofessional. "You see certain stones are very good at storing the sun's energy as warmth, and because of that cold blooded animals like snakes are frequently drawn to them, since they don't want to waste energy keeping their own bodies their own bodies warm when they could curl around something that is already hot instead.

Most people who keep pet lizards, snakes, or anything cold blooded and land dwelling basically, usually have a hotrock in their container so that the pet in question can curl up around when they're feeling tired. This one is internally heated and is hotter then most animals would find comforting, but why don't you try wrapping yourself around it and tell me what you think?

By the way, before you even feel the need to ask, perfectly safe you to do while pregnant for both yourself and our children, I could explain how I'm 100 sure of that, but something tells me we could both find more productive uses of our time." When Reed Richards was right, he was really right. Susan wrapped herself around the thing, as the first loop of her body came into contact she let out an "oh!" of surprise.

As more loops were added however the sounds she generated quickly became more along the lines of 'ooooohh"s of pleasure. Eventually after fully encircling the thing, Susan allowed her body from her breasts up to hang languidly over the side smiling at Reed. "Remember how I said this was just a rock a moment ago? I take it back, that'd be sort of like saying your penis is just something made of flesh, blood, and bone, it might be true, but it doesn't come near to describing just how much pleasure it can bring a girl."

Reed casually walked over and sat down so that they were more or less at eye level, even though to Susan the entire room seemed upside down. "Actually your wrong Susan, the male reproductive organ is completely boneless in design, it's a completely a matter of blood flow which decides weather it is firm or flaccid." Susan's eyes had started to glaze over slightly, paying even less attention to Reed's scientific speeches then she normally did. "Oh, interesting."

Reed luckily didn't take too much offence a her evident distraction. "Of course this isn't the only reason I invented the thing." Susan shook herself into a slightly more alert mental frame pushing aside the warmth that was pulsing through her body without even coming close to proving more then she could comfortably handle. "Nothing personal Reed, but even though it's big enough to do it on, to me that seems like nothing more then a surefire way for you to end up with a couple more burned patches of skin.

I thought your plan was to get the damaged parts of your face repaired, not for an even 'tan' from top to bottom." Reed shook his head wistfully. "That's not it Susan, it's just, as much as I made this thing for you as a place to relax, I also made it for myself as, well as a way to try and keep track of you.

Susan slowly (very slowly) began to unwrap herself from around her new toy, though the enjoyably pervading sense of warmth still clung to her outfit. That was one of the (many) great things about unstable molecules, they were very very good when it came to insulation. At the moment it made her feel like she was wearing clothes that had just come out of the drier which had always been a small private joy in her life. "What are you talking about?" As Susan once more resumed a bipedal form, Reed stood up. "It's just that, do you know how many nights over the last two months I've been sitting in that chair, and it wasn't until I bothered to look around that I realized that I was alone?"

Susan didn't have answer, but Reed did. "One was too many, and that's all there is to it. Because the first time it happened, when I suddenly noticed that you'd slinked off to somewhere else, I realized that I was right back to where I used to be. That having a body didn't make a lick of difference if I wasn't going to use it to be with you, the woman I love.

I know tend to think out loud when I work, and that most of my projects are far beyond your capacity to comprehension the first time you're exposed to them. But now that you have this, would you mind if there's something I just can't bring myself to stop working on, staying the night with me in here? I wouldn't need you to talk, wouldn't even really need you to listen, I just need you to be here for me.

That way whenever I need to, I can look over at you see that I'm not alone, and remember why it is that I wanted us to become the Fantastic Four in the first place. Because rather shamefully I must admit it has absolutely nothing to do with protecting our fellow man." Susan was looked straight into Reed's blue eyes, which were somehow both cold by the nature of the body they belonged to, and warm by the nature of the spirit which now inhabited that body.

"What reason is that?" "It was all about you Susan." "Huh?" Reed motioned in the general direction of his chair and sighed. "Could you be a dear and fetch that for me so I can sit down while I explain?" An outstretched arm easily accomplished that particular feat, and once he was seated Reed seemed a bit more composed.

"Once we had all managed to more or less get our bearings after accident, the most obvious thing the world occurred to me, that we were different, not just mentally but physically as well. I may have spent most of my time studying various sciences, but I didn't completely neglect other areas of research like history, and history had quite a lot to say on the subject of humanity's ability as a species to accept members of that same species who differed too radically from the norm physically.

The long and short of it is that by and large we can't. Of course over the years what's been considered 'too radical' has been relaxed, we no longer view a lack or surplus of skin pigment as a valid reason for ostracism and enslavement, at least no modern forward thinking person does. But I was willing to bet my right hemisphere, which was half of everything I had at the time, that we would doubtlessly fall into the category of too far from the norm to just be accepted back into society.

Which meant that it was a matter of two distinct possibilities, we would either be hated and feared for how different we were, or loved and cherished for it. It would take a man like the one who used to occupy this body to actively want the former, but I knew unless we were careful it might happen to us anyway.

I couldn't bear the thought of what it would mean if it happened to you, because it would have been better if you, if we'd all died in the crash then that coming to pass. So I strove with everything I had to make sure I didn't, and in part it was why I was able to live with being only a brain in a tank.

It was my penance for being so utterly sure that the ship's shielding would be more then enough to handle whatever we ran into, for the fact that in my arrogance I'd almost turned the woman I love into a monster in the eyes of the public." Susan had never heard Reed speak in that tone of voice before, she was use to hearing him sound like either the confident leader of what was quickly becoming cities most well known superhero team, or more less the very image of a slightly absentminded scientist.

That, that had come out in the voice of an ordinary man who had hopes and dreams like everyone else, and had come within millimetres of seeing those dreams smashed into pieces that were smaller then atoms. Without even needing to think about she stretched out her midsection and began to soothing wrap it around his. "You didn't.

You took what could have been disaster and turned it into a great opportunity for us and everyone we've vowed to protect." Reed straightened up slightly, but there was still a certain tiredness in his body. "Yes, I did, but that doesn't mean I can just forget about what almost happened. Still, you're right, I'm moving on with my life it's just taking me a little while. I've got a body again, and I now have an even more important cause then seeing you live the best possible life you can Sue." Susan arched her elongated back slightly. "Really, what's that?"

Reed managed to work his right arm free and placed it upon her extended midsection. "Simple, to make the world the best possible place it can be for my children." Susan beamed with pride, and then something different (but considering it was still one of the seven deadly sins maybe not all that different) coursed through her body. "You know Reed, if you wanted me to spend tonight, or any nigh in here with you, all you needed to do is ask."

She got to work and fairly soon Reed's clothing was is in a pile at his feet at which point she began to slither down Reed's shoulder. "Susan what are you doing?" She finished properly arranging herself before answering. "Simple, as nice as that fancy heating rock is, I just happen to know something else that I love which gives off heat and I can curl myself around.

It's a symbiotic relationship, you keep giving off heat for me, I'll keep your heat in for both of us to enjoy, give of some of my own back to you, and we can both be happy while you work on whatever you want." Reed slowly stood up and took a moment to examine himself, Susan did the same thing as inconspicuously as possible, feeling another well disserved swell of pride. To all appearances Reed was just wearing his Fantastic Four uniform, even the "4" symbol was in the right place. No one, no matter how perverse, would ever suspect that in actuality Reed was completely naked except for the body of one Susan Storm carefully spread across his body.

And so for about an hour Reed worked at his lab in peace and comfort until a certain sensation became so ever present that it couldn't be politely ignored. "Susan that's you isn't it?" His outfit rippled slightly and the neck and head of Susan Storm stretched out from it.

"Guilty as charged. Are you going to punish me for being such a bad girl?" Reed just shook his head and sighed. "You know there's a word to describe the way you've been acting over the last two months..." Susan of course saw the auditory punch coming and adjusted herself to let it bounce right off of her. "Let me guess, tramp, slut, whore, or something else along those lines?"

Reed just calmly shook his head. "Actually no, those all connected quite firmly with a woman who has several sexual partners for one reason or another quite frequently receiving monetary payments for her time spent in bed with them. I in my hopeless quest to try and make sure words retain the meaning they were first created to convey, was going to go with nymphomaniac.

Which to put as plainly as possible, refers to a woman who shows more desire for sexual activities then what is considered normal for their society. It frequently infers that someone has couple with multiple people over a decidedly short span of time, but weather or not they have is immaterial to if the word is being used correctly. To dumb it down another level, you have a certain hole that refuses to remain filled."

Susan licked her lips, smiled and "shrugged" sending another ripple through her body and subsequently into Reed's. "Well considering I could pretty easily fit your entire body inside that hole if I wanted to, is it all that surprising that it refuses to stay filled?" Reed calmly reached out, and since Susan hadn't tried to create the appearance of the dark blue gloves that were normally part of the uniform he was thus he able to rub his own bare skin against that of her cheek.

"Well I suppose you raise a good point. Though I trust I make a good effort?" There was a look in Susan's eyes she stretched out her face so hat her smile could grow even wider. "A very good, an excellent effort in fact. You know I suddenly have a new idea for how we just might be able to fill that hole for at least a little while longer then it normal..."

--

Reed listened and when she was finished he returned her smile, if nothing else he had to give Susan credit for her ingenuity. "All right then my soon to be very little nympho just let me get my real clothes back first, so that I have them on hand once we're done.

Its not like you can really help yourself and if I want you to continue the level of fealty you've shown up till now I should be ready to try and please you for as long as I can." Susan bobbed her head and neck up and down nodding in approval. "Aww for some reason hearing you call me that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It's got a nice classical ring to it also, makes me thing of fairies and pixies. Just calling someone some derivative of a prostitute seems so cold and sterile by comparison."

Reed was undressed in record time as Susan slid right off of his body and resumed her human appearance. "A true gentleman never descends to such vulgar language Susan, and nymphomania is no laughing matter.

Like most physiological conditions it can take years to properly treat the causes of it. Granted considering everything else the Fantastic Four has to deal with we'll just have to settle for dealing the symptoms whenever they manage to work their way to the surface. I hope you'll understand that saving the human race comes first, but once that's been dealt with you can always count on me to help you work through this whatever it takes."

Susan slowly began to retract, her entire body growing smaller and smaller. "Reed, when you say stuff like that it reminds me of how I can always count on you to be the bigger man." Her body wasn't changing its proportions unlike most times she stretched, just the scale. In this case while her height had previously been measured in feet it was no measurable in the inches. In the end she decided to go even smaller than that when she was done Reed easily scooped her up in the palm of his hand. "Enjoying the view?"

As he asked the question he held Susan up to his ear so that he could actually hear her response. How various stretches affected her vocal chords and lungs was another thing he'd have to spend more time studying, but evidently smaller over all equalled, well smaller over all. "Oh yes. It's larger the I am now, and doesn't that just open up a bunch of fun possibilities? For example I could certainly give the phrase 'pole dancing' an entirely new meaning if I wanted to. But for now lets just stick with the plan..."

Reed nodded then grabbed hold of Susan's neck with his other hand pinching it between his thumb and index finger. Then he lowered his hand back down and with a little help from Susan herself managed to affix the entire length of her body over his erect manhood. At which point Susan got to work stimulating him, and it didn't take long before she brought him to climax. Reed carefully kept one hand on Susan's body to make sure the force of his ejaculation didn't prove to much for her to bare, and it wasn't until he was finally drained that he removed his hand.

"Splosh!" It was a sound akin to a thoroughly filled water balloon being dropped but not breaking when it hit the ground. Reed quickly redressed himself and then got down on his hands and knees to examine his lover's condition. Feeling just a little guilt, he poked Susan making her body rock back and forth slightly and eliciting more sloshing sounds. "Well you know what they say, squeaky wheel gets the grease."

Susan licked her tiny lips with her equally tiny toung letting out a long "loud" moan of pleasure. "Good grease." In her smaller state their love making indeed lead to most profound change in Susan's body. Her minuscule frame was more or less filled to bursting with his seed and to accommodate it all her body had taken on an ovaliod shape, her hands arms and legs hanging limp and useless.

"So I take you enjoyed yourself?" Susan's voice was still much quieter then normal, so Reed made sure to lean in a little as he saw her lips move. "Like you wouldn't believe, hell I'm still enjoying myself. The way I shifted back and forth when you poked me? That was like getting fucked from the inside!"

Reed managed to once again pick Susan up with only one hand, though she was heavier now and much more difficult to grip properly, then he carried her over to his desk sat down and got to work. Every few minutes he'd take a momentary break and give the blue object laying a few inches away from his keyboard a reassuring squeeze eliciting from it a few sounds that weren't quite loud enough for him to understand (assuming they were words) at this distance, but it didn't matter.

He listened to the nature of the sounds rather then their content, and could almost imagine them to be some kind of exotic bird call. It was an incredibly soothing sound, but then a job well done had always put him in a good mood.

--

"Morning pussy." Susan lazily blinked her eyes open. As usual she wasn't able to "hold" complicated stretches like reducing the scale of her entire body once she stopped thinking about them, and after falling asleep she'd returned to her normal form. Which in turn meant that the load which had filled her to brim last night was no longer even a proverbial bludge, well she sill had a bludge in her body, but she was fairly sure it was caused by what she and Reed had done two months ago instead of last night's festivities.

"Let me guess, because last night when we did it you used my entire body as a..." "You reminded me of a cat I used to have." There was a very awkward silence between them. "Come again?" "I feel asleep at my chair tonight and when I woke up, you were unintentionally laying across my keyboard, and it reminded me of a cat I used to have."

As he spoke Reed attempted to run a hand along Susan's body from the base of her neck all the way down to her pert buttocks." "Right, sorry, I guess its true, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Susan got down off his desk, made his way over to the bathroom that Reed had attached to the lab, took care of her necessary routine of things to do after first waking up in the morning, then walked back into the lab.

"By the way, just for the record, you weren't really serious about the entire 'being female and enjoying sex too much' is a psychological condition on par with OCD right?" Reed spun his chair around to face her. "When sexual urges interfere with someone's ability to live a productive life it is a problem, or if they're having said urges for no aperient reason at all.

But obviously such a situation would be a problem for anyone, regardless of gender. But in our case, your increased desire and satisfaction in sexual activities have very logical groundings. I won't waste our time discussing why exactly satisfaction has increased recently, and as for desire? Well you're a woman with a very stressful job who also has another stressful situation on her mind when she isn't working.

There are of course many ways to deal with stress, but it's been more or less universally proven that as far as such things go, sex is a remarkably effective. Reminds someone that they're loved, helps the body find a way to release pent up adrenaline, quite frankly I'd be much more worried about you're mental health if you weren't experiencing increased sexual urges."

Susan let out a girlish giggle shifting her legs about slightly and bouncing to land right smack dab in Reed's lap. "Really?" Reed nodded once again stroking her chin, something he knew she had loved even before becoming Ultra Woman. "Of course. Granted, like I said, there is such a thing as 'too much sex' even monogamously, but we've got a long ways to go before we cross that line. The important thing to remember is that there are alternatives to sex as an outlet for your stress.

Though I suppose that's a little hypocritical of me to say, since the fact that I still haven't proposed to you is probably one of those things causing you stress that could be dealt with fairly easily." Susan began to wrap her body languidly, but not exactly sensually (or at least not yet errotically) around Reed's. "I would have said yes you know."

This time it was Reed's turn to be slightly behind in the conversation. "To what question?" Susan sighed and rolled her eyes. "What question do you think we're talking about? The question, that's what. I meant to tell you sooner, but back on the bridge you said you were going to propose to me after the flight if everything had gone according to plan, I would have said yes.

I'll say yes whenever you ask, though I'd prefer you do it so that we have time to get married before give birth or become too swollen with our children to make it down the aisle under my own power and have to be rolled there instead." Reed nodded and tired to do the best job he could of returning Susan's full body hug, but he wasn't all that successful.

"Thanks, but it's not fear that's holding me back. A woman like you disserves a story about her engagement that she'll be proud to tell her children and grandchildren about. I promise you, when the time comes, it'll be fantastic. Till then, you'll just have to settle for me helping you deal with the stress I'm causing you." "Thanks Reed."

There was silence in the lab for a few moments until Reed spoke up again. "May I make a deduction Sue?" "Go right ahead dear." Reed leaned back in his chair slightly as he spoke. "Given your usual pattern of morning behavior, and the fact that you are right now even as we speak most pleasantly massaging my groin, your in the mood to feel loved?"

Susan let out another lilting girlish giggle. "If it isn't too much trouble?" "Not that much, so how do you intend for us to start this time?" Susan flexed her elastic body and in moments Reed fell forwards out of his chair, lounging on top of Susan who rapidly began to expand herself to form a reasonable, if rubbery bed. At the same time the various loops she had around Reed's body began to quite expertly pull off his clothes as she got about disrobing herself and Reed just laid their calmly until his lover was ready for them to start.

"You know I take back what I said last night, I most deffiently did turn the woman I love into some kind of monster." Reed felt a ripple running through Susan as part of a full body shrug. "Well you've go no one to blame but yourself doctor. So I suppose it all comes down to a question of do you want me in a good mood so I'll be gentle, or make me angry so that I have to slip in here while your asleep and force myself on you?"

"I think we both know that you'll always be gentle with me Susan. Why do you think I pretended not to be in the mood so many times before the accident? It was part of a subtitle training process of giving you just enough to always leave you wanting more. Properly applied over a long enough period of time, mix in the right conditions and even the most wilful woman is nothing but putty in her man's hands. I've got you so well trained that I can practically set my watch to when you'll come begging me for sex like a dog for table scraps." Susan responded with a single word. "Woof."

--

By the time they had finished the two lovers' bodies were quite thoroughly intertwined. Reed panted heavily and tiny twitches continuned to run up and down the length of Susan's body like sexual aftershocks. Her upper body puffed out slightly as she drew in a deep breath. "Nothing but putty in your hands am I?" Reed who not able to draw in anywhere near as much air as Susan needed about a dozen seconds of panting before he could articulate words.

"Putty in my hands, and just about everywhere else to might be a more appropriate description. Now then, why don't you prove that you've got the necessary domestic skills to serve as my wife by making us breakfast?" Susan hung her head, increasing the length of her neck so that her eyes were more or less at the same height as her belly button, her voice a dull emotionless monotone. "Of course master."

She resumed her normal form and headed for the door, in the process getting exactly the reaction she was expecting and hoping for. "Get dressed first!" Susan dipped her head again and turned her body about heading off towards her clothing. For a few moments she contemplated correctly dawning her langiere, but pulling the bottom half of her uniform down over her head and pulling the top half of it up over her legs.

But she felt that'd be playing the mind control joke a bit too far, so she just got properly dressed and stretched out of the room a wide smile on her face, she had everything she could possibly want out of life. Then she felt a rumble in her stomach and sighed, either she or her kids was hungry, well at least for the next couple of months that would be two problems with the exact same solution.


	6. Chapter 6

FN: Before I get started, thanks to both Marvelous Mariaah and Jin Shirinue for their reviews of my last chapter.

Swelling with love Chapter Six Announcements: In which Reed Richards and Susan Storm are honest with themselves and others.

"Ben, there's something I want to talk with you about..." Ben was just a little bit surprised at seeing Reed waiting for him to return to the Baxter Building since most of the time it seemed like Reed was busy either working on stuff in his lab, with Susan, or a combination of both. But since Ben had just gone on a quick flight around the city and seen that nothing was glaringly wrong he decided he might as well hear him out.

"What?" "I was wondering if you could teach me how to fight." Ben had to admit it, it was hard for him to hear the end of that sentence over how it started, the part about how Reed Richards, the man knew everything, was coming to Ben for help learning something. Once he finally managed to wrap his mind about how improbably that was, looking at the sentence as a whole, it did make at least a modicum of sense.

Of course while he was thinking about that, Reed was continuing to explain his request. "You see Ben, it recently occurred to me that you're the only member of the Fantastic Four who has had actual hand to hand combat training, and while in theory we should be able to use overcome any obstacle we face through the right mix of teamwork, powers and inventions, sometimes a fight seems to come down to just that, a fight.

I know you can't exactly teach me everything you know over the course of a week or even a month, but I figure at least trying might be a productive use of my time." Ben raised an eyebrow very slowly. "You seriously want to learn how to fight?" Reed nodded, Ben could just imagine what his face should have looked like back in his original body.

Benjamin Grimm had a theory, so he decided the only thing to do was test it. He sucker punched the man who was probably his closest friend in the world. Reed let loose with a sound that would have sounded more appropriate coming from a dieing fish, grabbed hold of his stomach and doubled over. Though in his favor, at least he didn't fall to the floor the way Ben had half expected him to.

"What was that for?" Ben shook his head and sighed, this was going to be a long slow process, but then so had been the time he'd gone to Reed for help with calculus. "Reed, you can install whatever kind of deflector shields you want into that fancy suit of armor, and I'll admit Vic managed to do a real number on us with it, and you've doubtlessly attached even more fancy doohickie to it, but it won't change the basic principle of how a fight works. If you get into one, you're gonna get hit, and its gonna hurt.

I'm sure you've got the brains for learning moves, but your guts are another matter. So you tell me, do you still want me to teach you how to fight?" Reed drew in a deep breath and then straightened up, most of the way at least. "Yes."

"You must really love her." It was a really nice karmic touch to finally see Reed Richards look at him like he had no clue what they were talking about. "Who?" "Who do you think I was talking about Reed my Aunt Petunia, Susy Q! I mean come on, there are only so many reasons why a guy like you would take a punch like that and stick around knowing that he's going to end up taking more.

So I gotta figure that means you're just crazy enough in love with her that you don't mind the prospect of me beating the stuffing out of you, and that's... that's just fine with me. Now, why don't we head over to the gym so that I've got some padded matts to toss you around on?"

--

Johnny walked into his sister's room and found her to all practical appearances just standing around doing absolutely nothing. That was pretty weird in and of itself, given her condition he'd expected her to be either laying in bed or doing something with her powers. Not to mention there was a look in her eyes that suggested they weren't actually focused on what was in front of her, but instead were thinking about something else entirely, it was a kind of look he was much more used to seeing in Reed's eyes than Susan's.

"Hey sis, can we talk?" Susan twisted her neck around about 90 degrees and nodded, though below the neck her body was motionless. "I'm a little busy exercising at the moment, but I think I can manage to divide my attention, why?" Curiosity got the better of Johnny (as it was prone to) and for a moment he forgot all about his main purpose in coming here. "Really? Cause you don't seem to be doing anything, and I thought last time Reed checked you didn't even have muscles to tone. Unless you were doing some kind of special subtle body stretching that I haven't notice yet."

Susan shook her head, an odd sort of smile on her face, it was too smug for the Susan Storm that he remembered growing up with. "Actually at last count, well just between the two of us I really don't have a clue what Reed was telling me other then it couldn't hurt to try. As for what I'm doing at the moment, it's Kegels." "What now?" "A type of exercise Reed suggested I look into, they're typically done by pregnant women, and they help strengthen certain muscles in the pelvic region. Which is something I should be rather concerned about, given how much weight my belly is going to be making that area support in a couple months.

Anyway, doing Kegels help prevent the incontinence that can occur during pregnancy and has a couple other benefits..." Johnny would swear that he could feel a "does not compute" message just waiting to leap into his field of vision. "Right then, sorry I asked. I just came in here to say, you and Reed aren't in this alone." Susan squinted at him slightly. "Of course not, if we were then it'd be the Dynamic Duo or something else like that instead of the Fantastic Four."

Johnny sighed very deeply, turning his gaze in the direction of the small bludge in his sister's midsection, knowing that it was only going to get larger as time went on for the next few months. God that thing freaked him out. There were any number of reasons for it, to pick his current "favorite" (and one he least liked reflecting on) the sight of it was physical, undeniable, proof that his sister and Reed Richard were doing it, a mental image that was much more disturbing then anything he'd seen fighting crime as the Mandroid.

"Not like that, I mean with your kids. I know I wasn't the best brother growing up, especially after what happened to mom and dad. You had your own issues to deal with, and it didn't help that..." Johnny couldn't help it, he burst into laughter that apparently awoke Susan from the almost trance like state she had achieved while listening to him. "What joke am I missing this time?" Johnny wiped a tear form his eye and sighed. "Sorry, it's just that I was going to say it didn't help that you had to be constantly looking over your shoulder to keep track of me, and then I realized that right now you're literally looking over your shoulder at me."

Susan's eyes glanced down, and then she let out a delicate chuckle at the way past and present events overlapped one another. "I see your point. If a girl can't have eyes in the back of her head, having a head that can rotate 360 degrees is the next best thing. But getting back to what you were saying...?"

Johnny gritted his teeth, it was now or never. "I realize that even for a Susan Storm with superpowers, six kids is a lot. So I just want to say, when the kids get here, I'll try to be an uncle who helps you look after them instead of a little brother you need to look after..."

Susan just staired at him, her mind evidently being pulled in several different directions at the same time. "Thanks." Johnny nodded very, very slowly, as if to remind himself that the conversation at hand really was taking place. "I promise that I'll at least try to be a bit more mature, so that when the time comes, I can be someone who helps you with the kids. I mean I figure I owe it to you all things considered.

Cause I'm sure if I hadn't been so gungho about the possibility of going into space on your boyfriend's rocket ship then you wouldn't be in your current situation. I mean, why else would Susan Storm have wanted to get on that ship if she didn't feel like she needed to make sure her immature brother didn't end up pushing the wrong button during the flight and accidentally getting everyone sucked out into the vacuum of space?

Yeah you weren't turned you into some kind of monster, and you seem to be enjoying yourself, but still... If Reed could have been turned into a floating brain, then the odds of you turning into Ultra Woman were probably the same as you growing an extra pair of arms, or suddenly having your ears pop out of the top of your head and your body covered with fur... you know what I'll just skip to the end of this speech. It's that there are some risks that you shouldn't have had to take on my account, and the best way I can think of making it up to you is to try and at least help you deal with having so many kids underfoot."

For a moment Johnny seriously though that his sister might be dealing with her own blue screen of death, but then in all fairness he probably would have had trouble believing that such words could come from the mouth of Jonathan Spencer Storm as well, so he decided not to wait for her to actively respond before continuing.

"I'm not saying I'm volunteering to help you change diapers or feed them, but when the time comes, the two of you won't have to look very far to find a baby sitter, and I don't mean Ben." Apparently it was taking Susan just as long to properly realize just what her brother had said as it was taking him to realize how to properly say what he was thinking. "Thanks, but you do realize that since my kids have my powers, you're gonna have your hands full, they'll probably end up showing you a thing or two about being hard to keep track of before they're done."

Johnny chuckled, he was sure he had once heard Karama defined as having your kids do to you whatever you'd done to your parents. For him however evidently it was having your sister's kid do to you whatever you'd done to her. "Well if all else fails, I'll just armor up, with any luck they'll flock to something shiny like bees to honey."

There was a slight twitch in Susan's eyes. "I'd be careful about that, remember they'll be Reed's kids as well. I think he managed to find a way to blow up his parent's garage and burn off his eyebrows before he turned ten. So anything shiny and mechanical in their vicinity might be quite likely to find itself pulled apart and then put back together with whatever 'improvements' they can think of."

Johnny just shrugged. "Trust me, I'm sure they'll be wonderful kids, and I'm sure I'll get along great with them. I mean think about it, you just keep doing the maternal thing you did with me, Reed will be, well Reed, and I can be the crazy cool uncle who doesn't have a problem hurling them off the roof to see who bounces the farthest."

"Johnny!" Johnny just shrugged. "Hey, if they're anything like me with your powers then they'd get a kick out of it. Anyway, just saying, whatever happens, you can count on me to be there for you, though I suppose its up to you to figure out what exactly that's worth to you. So unless you've got something else to say, I'll just be leaving now..."

Susan nodded, and as Johnny left the room he took a moment to wipe his forehead, if he'd been in Mandroid form there probably would have been droplets of oil running down his head. "I can't believe I just said all that."

--

Susan Storm fell backwards onto her bed looking up at the ceiling. "I can not believe my brother just said all that."

--

Reed more or less stumbled into Susan's room, looking like he had been through hell. Of course because he was wearing an unstable molecule uniform that covered his entire body from the neck down and his bland facemask from the neck up, it was impossible for Susan to tell the true extent of what he'd been put through, but he was certainly walking with a very pronounced limp.

"What happened to you?" Reed wordlessly made his way over to a chair that was closer to the door than the bed, and sank into it. Only once he'd done that, did he turn his head towards her and respond, as if whatever he'd just been through had made it impossible for him to multitask. "Ben..."

Susan's entire body tensed like a spring, ready to leap into action with only the slightest provocation. "What do you mean? Did the Puppet Master take control of him again?" Reed shook his head slowly as if he was barely able to move his neck. "It's nothing like that, I asked him to. I wanted him to give me some training me in hand to hand combat... and he's a very good teacher..."

Susan relaxed slightly. "You know Reed I don't exactly need to be the most masculine, manly man on the face of the Earth to make me fall in love with you." Reed blinked, slowly, as if even doing that hurt him.

"Would you feel better if I said I was doing it for myself?" Susan just sat there and pondered for a moment. "You know I actually think I would, considering that its your body and I guess you can do whatever you want with it, though I'm still a little surprised."

Reed let loose with a half sigh, half moan. "Well, like I said to you, teamwork and experience in battle are important tools in our profession. With your powers you probably would achieve the best results just doing whatever feels most natural. I on the other hand, considering myself lucky to once again have at my control what amounts to more or less your average human body, probably could gain quite a lot by looking at already established fighting styles.

Just as a general rule for the team, we should probably try and find time to spar with one another every week or so, to help us get a better understanding of what the others are capable of, not to mention how to disable without actively harming one another in case for some reason we find ourselves fighting one another again, or even just villains with similar powers."

Susan really had to hand it to Reed, his body posture said he probably would have been in less pain if he'd just had a limb amputated, and yet he was able to put that pain aside and focus on other issues for the good of the team. "You've got a good point. We tend to more or less just do our own things when it comes to training, doing some together might not be a bad idea."

Reed winced again as he nodded, and Susan's heart went out to him, she could have gotten punched, punted, and otherwise pummelled, for hours on end, all the while happily bouncing from one blow to the next, confident that her elastic body would take it all in perfect stride.

Ironically secure in the knowledge that her children possessed her powers as well, Susan couldn't help but feel that at the moment it was her husband much more than her children who needed to be safely enfolded within her body. Then slowly a smile started to spread across her lips. "It hurts to sit in that hard chair doesn't it?" Reed just nodded, it probably hurt him to breath to a certain extent as well.

That was all the prompting Ultra Woman needed, she more or less melted out of her bed into a puddle that began to slowly ooze across he floor in his direction. "Well then why don't I provide you with a more comfortable place to rest?" Susan's chaotic form shot out four tendrils that wrapped around Reed and pulled him over to her. In moments she had transformed her body into what was effectively a human mattress that encased all of Reed's body except his head, next to which she "grew" her own.

"I trust that this is an improvement?" Reed twisted his head as best he could and kissed her on the lips. "A vast one." Then Reed allowed his body to go limp, grateful that the soft folds of Susan's body currently were putting precious little more pressure on his many burses then floating in water would have.

For her part, Susan was content to just full body cuddle and leave it at that, the passing euphoria of orgasms while extremely nice, but wasn't even in the same league with the unending contentment that came from knowing that not only were you in love, but you were loved back.

--

As Susan Storm woke a smile came to her face. It was surprising at times how the little things in life could be so important, like just waking up and hearing the sound of someone else in bed with you gently exhaling. Granted, it was also things like that which reminded Susan that first off Reed Richards was no longer just a bodiless brain (it'd been a condition that had persisted for half a year so it was understandable if even after three months she still sometimes had nightmares about him being that way again) but once again a living breathing man who happened to also be the father of the six three month old children growing within her womb.

For a moment Susan just laid there, trying to figure out exactly what had awaked her, and wondering if she was about to have another less than exhilarating bout with morning sickness. But as she took the time to interpret all the signals her body was sending her, it turned out to be something much more mundane. Susan slid out from underneath the covers and landed on the floor, she had discovered through trial and error that this was the best way for her leave the bed if she didn't want to disturb Reed's sleep.

Of course as she reformed her body, shivers began to run up and down it due to the fact that she no longer had those nice warm blankets (or Reed's nice warm body) to protect her nude form from the cold. That might be overselling it a bit, the Baxter Building was hardly freezing, but sudden shift in temperature just came as a bit of a shock. Luckily it was also an easily dealt with problem, while Susan liked to casually and carelessly fling her garments any which way they cared to go before sex, Reed had other ideas.

After being woken up a handful of times by the sound of her searching the room for a particular misplaced article of clothing, he had suggested that she needed to develop a system. That idea still sounded fairly ridiculous and utterly unromantic, but on the other hand Susan had to admit that it worked. Bra and panties hung neatly over the same bedpost they where every night, unstable molecule shirt, pants, gloves, belt and boots all waiting on in the same drawer of the nightstand for her to either put on like a normal person or simply slide her body into.

She decided for the latter option, for one thing it was faster and while time wasn't exactly at a premium, the sooner she took care of certain needs the better. Secondly, though she'd never admit such things aloud, (especially where her brother might hear) sometimes it was just fun to frivolously use her powers in a way that didn't really help or hurt anyone. If nothing else, it was a nice little way to remind yourself that no it wasn't a really long, really strange dream, you actually did have superpowers.

Though she could have doubtlessly multitasked and used her upper body for something else while the lower half or so of it was indisposed, Susan didn't particularly feel like it. Once the need that had awakened her was dealt with, she flushed the toilet, washed and dried her hands, then finally took a moment to examine herself in the mirror. Her face at the very least didn't make the fact that she was pregnant all that obvious, (well Reed said she was glowing) though all things considered she probably should have been rather disturbed if it did.

Of course as she directed her eyes downward she couldn't help but admit that if she was looking in a full length mirror it would have been a different story entirely. There was a rather painfully noticeable bludge in the belly of Susan Storm, and it was too firm for fat. Oh well, pregnancy was the price a woman paid to bring her children into the world, and all things considered by skipping the instalment plan Susan was going to end up with quite a lot to show for this nine months of her life.

At least it hadn't proven more then her legs felt comfortable supporting yet, even if she was already starting to notice how her normal walk was slowly turning into waddle. For a moment Susan thought about grabbing a brush and using it to get her hair in proper working order, but ended up shaking her head. She did it again and again, and after about five good shakes her hair had improbably (at least to someone who didn't know the full extent of her powers) changed itself from a somewhat severe case of bed head to what was Ultra Woman's currently established hairstyle.

Having elastic hair not only let her change styles on a whim, but also made dealing with knots a snap. Feeling suitably pleased with herself, Susan returned to bed slipping back under the blankets. She just laid there for a few moments, enjoying the slow steady rhythm of Reed's breathing, then gave into temptation. She began to twist her body around his and after completing a couple loops the sensation of his skin rubbing up against her outfit awakened him.

Reed tried to preform those traditional stretches that just about everyone did upon first waking up, but Susan playfully restrained him, keeping his body a prisoner of her pliable form. Of course it didn't take long for Reed to realize exactly what was going on and join in the fun, a reaction that was born of a mix of his genius and experience at finding himself in situations that were close enough to this one.

"You know waking up like this Susan I sometimes can't tell if you're the suppose to be Eve or the serpent." Various references to snakes where quickly joining ones made about amoebas as another running bedroom joke between the two, and for equally obvious reason. While the way Susan's body worked might be amoeba like, the way she frequently stretched it into long coils like the ones that currently held Reed doubtlessly gave her an occasionally serpentine appearance.

"I suppose whichever way you want to follow the analogy it makes me your downfall doesn't it?" Reed just chuckled, and managed (mainly due to Susan's consent) to work and arm free, placing it on her belly which for all the other stretching her body had done, still remained more or less its "orrigional" shape. "Fair enough, but only in one way does it mean I love you. Granted this hardly feels like a culch of eggs about to be laid."

Susan began to slowly throw another loop of her body around Reed's. "It isn't, that's what's left of my last meal. Care to be my next?" For an answer Reed turned and looked her straight in the eyes, and Susan felt herself melting. The expression was almost completely literal, at the very least her previously hard and firm coils turned into loose rubbery bands that Reed had no problem stretching outwards until he was able to escape from them.

He climbed out of bed and began to get dressed while Susan kept right on melting until she was nothing but a puddle of blue on the bed, at which point she was finally able to shake her head clear, regain control of her body and reform herself. "Heh, there aren't many men who can make a woman's heart melt with a glance the way you can Reed." Of course what went unsaid was that Reed had recently been starting to once again get a handle on his old psychic tricks.

In this case he'd managed to temporarily keep any motor control signals from getting from Susan's brain to the rest of her body. Used on someone else it would have made them topple over stiff as a board, but ironically because of Susan's unique (well considering that her children evidently had it as well, it might be better called exotic) biology, it had the opposite effect, in her boneless body the only thing that kept her from being a puddle of pink ooze 24/7 was those particular signals.

But since it only worked at dam near point blank range, under most circumstances he would have been better off using more conventional attacks, but most was not all, and sometimes even Reed Richards enjoyed showing off just for the sake of showing off.

Susan reformed her body back to its perfectly normal (if pregnant) shape as Reed returned to the bed. "Well Susan I just think that's the universe's way of letting us know we belong together." Susan nodded then leaned back looking up at the ceiling. "Yep, though the one thing I don't get is why if I'm the snake, you're the one who can hypnotize me with a glance."

Reed laid down next to her, and grabbed her neck, twisting it around so that she was looking at him. It was stuff like that which Susan had really come to appreciate over the last three months. Reed realizing and taking advantage of the fact that her body's new nature could let the two of them interact in ways that they'd never even considered possible.

A year ago, doing what he'd just done would have involved Reed Richards snapping Susan Storm's neck, but to Mr. Fantastic it was just a friendly way of getting Ultra Woman's attention. "Well life's not always perfect or fair Sue, we just have to make the best of it. Though I'll be the first to admit that 'the best' has certainly been much better now that the two of us can really be together again."

Normally Susan wouldn't have even thought to argue with a statment like that, but at the moment she was still feeling slightly peeved from the way he'd been practicing his powers on her without asking, or at least giving her a warning beforehand. Granted Susan had been doing the exact same thing to him, but it seemed more a matter of intent then action; Susan had been using her powers to acquire what she'd thought of as an consensual grip on Reed, and he'd used his to make her have no choice but to lay there for what felt like the worlds longest half a minute.

"Well it may be a bed of roses for you Reed, but remember I'm the one who has to put up with this." As she spoke Susan patted her belly with both hands, leaving no room for interpretation what exactly 'this' was. To her surprise Reed placed his own hands along the curve of her belly. "Sue, can I?" Susan didn't have any idea exactly what he was asking permission for, but she nodded all the same.

Reed slowly and carefully rolled up a section of her outfit allowing him to place a tender kiss on Susan's swollen middle. It was a kiss that left her extremely surprised. Both in how good it felt, and where Reed had given it to her. She'd heard plenty of stories about women who's husbands (and as she so frequently reminded herself one way or another, the two of them weren't even engaged yet) no longer found them attractive during pregnancy because of the what it did to their figures.

She hadn't expected outright revolution from Reed, more along the lines of a simple coldly logical acceptance that while she might be bent out of shape now, she'd get better soon enough. Something that felt a lot like out and out affection though, that she'd never planned on. In the end, a quick "Thanks, that feels good..." was all she was able to stammer before words became completely lost as Reed's kiss gave way to him slowly working his tongue all the way up and down the slopes of her belly.

When he finally stopped Susan just lay there her entire body shivering with delight. "Well in addition to your other skills, let me add that you really do know how to make a girl feel wanted." Reed slowly unrolled her outfit once again letting the blue unstable molecules drop over and outline of her belly. "Why would you even dream that I wouldn't want to always be near you?

Up until recently I never realized just what a scientifically fascinating progress pregnancy was." Normally when Reed started talking in that particular tone of voice it left Susan wanting to either leave the room or fall asleep, but this time, this time to her immense surprise it making her feel not only interested, but actually sort of aroused! "Go on..."

Reed placed his hands atop her belly, massaging it as he spoke. "Well for one thing, I'd never considered the sheer amount of elasticity a woman's skin has to display, especially when she's pregnant with more then one child. Of course it may seem like nothing to you, but looking at it without that particular frame of reference, what happens normally during human pregnancy seems almost like a superpower in and of itself.

For another, the sheer convergence of so many factors that are in and of themselves interesting makes your current situation exponentially so. Your powers, the number of children you're having, how you managed to get pregnant when you hadn't been menstruating, the fact that you're children have already displayed the ability to duplicate your powers, waiting to find out if any of those six will start showing signs of my mental powers as their brains start to develop, how exactly I might be able to tell if those powers have in fact developed...

It all adds up to making your condition every bit as worthy of study as the accident which originally granted us our powers." Susan coughed slightly, a sly smile coming to her face. "I can think of two more reasons that it might be catching your interest Reed, first I'm the woman you love, and secondly these are your sons and or daughters currently growing within me."

She didn't say it chidingly as if she was upset, it was more along the lines of a gentle teasing. All the same, Susan had a feeling that if the facemask could, it would have been blushing profusely. "Of course, I suppose I do have a rather bad habit of missing the things that are right in front of my eyes." Someone else might have claimed those two things were so obvious that they didn't need to be said, but for all his intelligence Reed Richards could be surprisingly open about his faults.

"You know I've done some research on what sextuplet pregnancies are usually like, would you like to hear about it?" The way he said it almost made it sound as if he was trying to offer up the information as a form of penance for his previous mistake. Personally Susan didn't mind, as once again she started to weave elastic coils around her lover's body. For his part, Reed allowed himself to be ensnared, his voice not so much missing a beat throughout the entire process.

"Bare in mind this is all information gained from study of women who don't have superpowers, but here it is. As you probably already know it's usually around the time that woman enters into her third trimester that her condition starts to become obviously visible, in single child pregnancies at least. In your case at about that point in time you might find your belly becoming so big and heavy that your own legs are no longer strong enough to support it.

You'll likely end up needing a wheelchair or some other aid to maintain any kind of real mobility. That said, from about eight months onward it'd probably be best if you agreed to just stay bedridden until you actually gave birth." As Reed finished that sentence Susan more or less completed her preliminary encirclement of his body and began to send what she hoped were vaguely sensual pulses of movement up and down her body.

From the way Reed's tone became somewhat lower, his words coming out with a bit more time between she suspected that she was succeeding to at least some degree. "At which point I'm afraid to say you'll be finding yourself rather helpless. You'll be lying on your side just about 24/7, since laying flat on your back can leave your womb pressing down on your other organs painfully bordering on dangerously, and given the reach of your arms in comparison to the size of your belly, not only will you need your meals brought to you, but also carefully laid out if you want to be able to successfully feed yourself in any sense of the phrase.

Also because your mobility will be close to nil, since its unlikely that you could find the strength to shift your belly enough to even roll over, you'll end up needing someone to help you take care of several somewhat delicate maters of hygiene to say the least. They'd have to strip you naked, assuming you could find clothes that fit, which admitting thanks to unstable molecules shouldn't be as hard as it once was, then you'd need to be given what amounts to a full body sponge bath.

After that you'd be redressed in unsoiled undergarments and it'd probably be best if your entire belly was rubbed down with a mixture designed to help it stretch painlessly. Then hopefully you could be shifted onto your other side as a way of doing the little possible there is to do to prevent, or at least lessen the bedsores you'd be bound to occur. The process would have to be repeated at least three times a day most likely.

Luckily I'd predict that because of the number of calories you'd need to consume to help your children develop properly and the lack of physical exertion you'd quickly find yourself falling into a naturally half awake state where the time would fly right by. At that point it'd probably best if you didn't even try to feed yourself but instead simply lay there and let those people taking care of you see to your nutritional input as well."

Susan's own voice was getting a little deeper, as she couldn't help but joyfully picture the image to her laying there like an absurdly pregnant princess while Reed (her knight in shining (technological) armor) saw to her every need. "Well if that's what's going to happen to me, I suppose I should make my peace with it before I just wake up one day and find its come to pass. Do you have any ideas about who we could find to look after me while I'm in such a pitiable condition?"

"Well as you know Susan, when you're involved money is no object, I'd be glad to hire the finest people trained in such matters..." Susan felt her grip on Reed loosening as her heart sank. "Though all things considered, if you're willing, what would probably be best for you and the children is if I just momentarily put my other projects on hold for a month or two to personally make sure that everything goes according to mother nature's plan."

Susan's heart rebounded faster then she would bouncing of a wall. "You really think that'd be the best way to handle it?" She tired not to sound too eager as she asked the question. Reed confidently nodded, the motion causing his chin to rub up against one of her coils that was loosely wrapped around his collar.

"Of course. Countless studies have shown that a mother's psychological state can have a direct impact upon the health of her children, and who am I to argue with their veritable mountain of empirical evidence? Now naturally finding yourself reduced to a state when you're barely able to fend for yourself any more then the children who you'd soon give birth to is a situation bound to make a woman feel anxious on some level.

But with any luck, my constant presence should do plenty to soothe your otherwise distressed mind." Susan chuckled slightly. "Reed the way you're saying it you almost might be describing looking after an animal rather then the woman who should be your wife by then." At that point Susan got the distinct sensation that if Reed had possessed more mobility of limb, he would have been using his hands to stroke whatever portion of her he could reach.

"Don't take it personally Susan, I know that however dire or distressing the situation you'll put on a brave face an act gallantly, one only need to look at the kind of threats you've faced ever since the accident to see proof enough of that. But your children will be able to sense if you're tense or nervous or unhappy no matter how hard you try to hide it.

Luckily the subconscious animalistic portion of your brain that will be sending those signals of fear can also be appeased by certain types of knowledge that the conscious mind only considers facts. For example simply the sight and scent of me nearby should do your subconscious mind a world of good since it'll trigger signals that are just about universally the same across all mammals, your mate is nearby, he will provide sustenance and protection."

Sure enough just the slow serene way he said those words managed to bring a smile to Susan's face for reasons she couldn't logically explain. But then considering that Reed had just been going on about how logic couldn't explain everything the human body did, that clearly meant that Susan shouldn't bother straining herself trying to force things to always make sense. "Of course I don't think I'll ever be quite that helpless, I'll always probably be able to move about by curling my body into a ball and bouncing from one place to another.

Not to mention if it's all the same to you, I'll probably be stretching my lower half away from my immobile belly when nature calls so that it's only the kids we need to buy diapers for. That said, yeah I'd like that a lot Reed. You promise no matter what pregnancy does to my body you'll still love me?" Reed chuckled deeply and at an unspoken signal Susan began to uncoil from around him, letting her body assume her normal human appearance, a shape which was designed for letting Reed embrace her instead of the other way around.

"Susan, if you haven't noticed, I've seen you change physically in more ways then I can count ever since you got your powers. Not a single way you've found to stretch yourself has made me feel any less in love with you. I love Susan Storm no matter what shape she takes." Susan slowly began to compact her entire body into one small sphere that Reed could fully encircle with his hands alone, which was her way of giving him a chance to physically push or pull her body any way he pleased. Yet amazingly even reduced to something sampler then your average fully grown human lung, she still had no trouble talking to him. "Wonderful, because Susan Storm fells the exact same way about Reed Richards."

"By the way, you do remember what you promised to do today don't you?" "Sex you up real good?" "Not exactly, you're three months along, and we've already talked about what that means..." All of a sudden the spherical Susan Storm came shooting out of Reed's hands as if she had been covered in grease. She landed on the bed, resumed her normal form and looked up at him with pleading eyes. "Do we have to? Can't we just stay in bed with each other all day?" Reed apparently determined to bring her around to his way of seeing things sat down in bed next to her yet again. "First off all, we've already set up a press conference. So you have two choices, you can either own up to what is happening like a mature woman, or you can hide under the bed like a girl."

Susan's head extended itself, falling off her shoulders, then off of the bed, her voice echoing upwards from the floor. "Well I don't see any monsters hiding under here, so I think I'll just stake out a claim now while there's still room available. I mean I'm good at fitting into small spaces, all I need is a pillow and I'm set!"

Unfortunately Reed wasn't the easily daunted type. He grabbed hold of Susan's neck and proceed to reel her head back up onto the bed one handful at a time. If Susan had wanted to she could have just extended her neck even further, but she didn't feel like playing quite that hard to get at the moment. "You know Susan, it's a bit surprising that the woman who talked to me about how nothing could hurt her, is suddenly discovering that the idea of admitting she's pregnant makes her want to head for the hills."

Susan retracted her neck to its normal length, and then began to slowly curl her entire body in a clockwise circle, but took the action beyond normal human limits. "Well like you said, amoeba, no spine at all. Come on, why can't we just keep this our, or at least the Fantastic Four's little secret?" Susan wasn't truly terrified, but she certainly didn't like the idea of publicly admitting the fact that she was knocked up.

After all, while it was something that was out of the public eye she could giggle to herself with amusement at the concept of how people would react when they found out, experiencing that reaction was going to be something else entirely. It also didn't help that she'd discovered that by carefully using her powers she was able to mold her body so as to look not in the slightest bit pregnant, even if it was getting to be more of a stretch as time passed. But over the three months they'd been together as Ultra Woman and Mr. Fantastic, Reed really had gotten good at knowing just how to push her buttons, which was impressive, because what buttons she had to be pushed tended to shift about as her body did.

It was complicated to say the least, even Susan wasn't quite sure exactly what her erogenous zones were sometimes, at least up until the point that Reed hit them, but then that was just one of many advantages to being married to a genius. In this case, he began to slowly run one hand through her hair, while his other worked its way along the curve of her back where spine should have been. "First of all Susan, the repercussions are going to come out sooner or later, it's the price you pay for deciding to keep the kids, you are still sure about that aren't you?" "Yep. Though couldn't you just, I don't know, build a time machine and we take it a few months into the future so that even though I'm still pregnant with six of your kids I give birth to them, say ten months after the wedding?"

She expected his answer even before he got it. "Time travel, even if possible, can't possibly work that way. Because if we go into the future then the time line would extrapolate itself as if we vanished on the day we left. Which means that there's no way you and I could arrive in a time period where we're already married through time travel.

It'll be like pulling off a bandaid Susan, we go out, we do it, its over." Susan looked at Reed with scepticism practically flowing out of her pores. "You don't know the press very well do you? Come on, pregnant unmarried superheroine and her lover/teamate? They're gonna be all over us like ants at a picnic."

Reed just kept right on stroking her body and speaking in the most soothing a tone of voice as he could manage. "Susan, when the Moleman started creating localized earthquakes that were dragging various atomic power plants below ground, where was Ultra Woman?" "Well thanks to your directions she was on Monster Island using her arms to lasso as many of his followers a she could."

It felt a little weird to be talking about herself in the third person, especially considering she didn't feel like there was any sort of clear dividing line between Susan Storm and Ultra Woman, yes there was the Fantastic Four outfit, but she was quickly finding that whatever the occasion (especially while pregnant) her unstable molecules outfit was her favorite thing to wear. But then Susan decided so long as she only did it on occasion being allowed to talk about herself in the third person could be considered one of the occupational perks of being a superheroine.

"And when the skrulls were trying to discredit the Fantastic Four as way to clear the way for a possible invasion, where was she?" "Well once Big Brain helped her track them down, she was pummelling the hell out of those slimy shapeshifters." "And when the Miracle Man was bamboozling the entire city out of its valuables, where was she?" "A number of places, crushed underneath the treads of the prototype battle tank he was stealing to pick a single example at random. Not one of her finer moments all things considered."

"Well she did manage to help the rest of the Fantastic Four find out where he hiding." "Yeah, but it was Big Brain who realized that his 'power' consisted entirely of hypnotism and managed to effectively relay information about what was actually happening to our minds so that we could defeat him."

"Well that was just an example of getting lucky. We have different powers, we're different people, and subsequently we're good at different things. For example not so long after that, Ultra Woman was leaving Namor more or less tripping over his own tongue and saving the city in the process." Susan started to shorten the length of her body slightly, moving back towards a conventional appearance, with an odd sort of smile on her lips. "So what you're telling me Reed, is that I'm so beautiful that it can be defined as a secondary superpower, like how Johnny can turn his flesh to metal and syphons energy, I'm elastic and incredibly attractive?"

"Well if my own, Ben's and Namor's opinions are any measurement to go by, I think the answer to that question is a rather resounding 'yes' Susan. But to get back to my point, considering that the Ultra Woman has saved the city once from an invasion of subterranean nature, once from one of a extraterrestrial one, and finally once from one of an aquatic nature, not mention the Puppet Master and Victor Von Doom, though those were two threats dealt with fairly subtly before the public could realize what was going on, I fail to see how anyone should be able to look down their nose at her just because she committed a minor sexual taboo. And frankly if there are people that petty then I have no intention to listening to anything they say, and I suggest you do the same."

Susan had to admit Reed as usual made a very persuasive argument. "Well technically the two of us committed more then one sexual taboo, and not all of them were exactly minor, but having sex before we got married is the only that there's any proof of." "So you'll be ready to put your best foot forward in a few hours?" "Best foot and a few other things forward, though in all fairness my belly puts itself forward on its own just fine."

--

Sure enough there were representatives of just about every major newspaper in the city and plenty of minor ones. Reed was in his full crime fighting outfit, not just the armor but also what amounted to an unstable molecule cloak and cape, yes it was rather overly dramatic, but if you couldn't be overly dramatic as a superhero when could you?

/Ready to roll Ultra Woman?\ /Ready Mr. Fantastic.\ Reed coughed for a moment, tapped a microphone that he already knew was in perfect working order. The buzz of static did a good job to make the press stop milling around just waiting for something to happen and got their attention focused solidly on him. "As I mentioned previously, the Fantastic Four have an important announcement to make to you, and anyone else who considers it of interest. As some of you have most likely guessed, it involves Ultra Woman, so for that very reason I'll turn the microphone over to her."

Susan slithered out of the Baxter Building, moving in such a unique manner no one was likely to notice her condition. She took Reed's place in front of the microphone, and because of the podium her midsection was effectively hidden from view. "Thank you all for coming here, and I would have said this sooner but it's a somewhat delicate matter and the time we had to temporarily disband the team recently didn't help. So I'd just like to say that what you're about to see is in no way a result of my powers."

That said, she did subtly elongate her legs so as to be able to take a step to the side more effectively, and sure enough just like she expected there was a extremely audible gasp as the crowd caught sight of her belly. "Yeah, I'm pregnant, and let me just answer a few questions before you even need to bother asking them. Amazing as it sounds, I'm only three months along, but its sextuplets which is why my kids are already taking after their mother and determined to find out just how far our unstable molecule uniforms can stretch. As for who the father is, I'll turn the mike over to him before you burst a blood vessel in anticipation of finding out."

Susan elongated her arm till it Reed was easily able to take the microphone from her. "Much as it shames me to admit it, Susan and I started, consummating our adulation of one another the very night that I first found myself in possession of a body once again. So as you could no doubt guess, the two of us are very much head over heels in love and have every intention of getting married in the immediate future. You can expect us to let you know the exact date as soon as we figure it out ourselves. So before I open up the floor to your questions let me just say..." "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?"

--

Reed looked for a moment like he was about to chide Johnny for cutting him off, but it was a very quickly passing moment. Mandroid had a good point. It was a green device, vaguely froglike in shape who's exact size was hard to gauge at the moment, that was currently hurtling through the atmosphere and blazing so brightly that even though it was midday it almost seemed like a second (or at least offspring of the) sun.

Reed was the first one who finally managed to close his jaws and get over his shock. I'm afraid that we'll have to bring this press conference to a somewhat abrupt conclusion..." Then he quickly preformed the necessary actions and in moments the Fantasticar was hovering overhead. "Ben give Johnny a lift, I don't think we should ask these fine members of the press to clear out just so that our chosen mode of transport can land. That said, I would be extremely grateful if you'd all take a couple steps back." Ben nodded, grabbed, Johnny's arms and took off.

Susan meanwhile looked down at her belly, up at the Fantasticar and then back at him. "I take it that you want me to give you helping hand up as well?" Reed shook his head. "Just get up there yourself and be ready for me, it'll be easier then pulling me up in my armor." She looked at him askance for amount an then began stretching her body straight up until she was able to get most of it into her seat at which point the lower portion of her body, pregnant belly included quickly joined her.

Reed took a few steps back as he reminded himself that no matter how he screwed up, so long as his shield systems worked he'd be fine, and his shield system always worked. Then he cricked both his pinkie fingers in exactly a certain manner that he had deduced as extremely unlikely to ever happen as an unintentional hand motion.

The extremely powerful propulsion system Reed had carefully attached to the back of is armor (it was mostly hidden by the blue cloak he wore in addition to it) went off like clockwork, one moment he was just standing there, the next he was hurled straight up like the human rocket he'd turned himself into.

Luckily just like he'd hoped, before he had to worry about any kind of fine landing control a giant blue hand shot out and wrapped itself around him like a full body airbag. Susan's arm pulled him into the Fantasticar and deposited him into his seat at which point just as he'd expected his teamates began commenting on what they'd just seen. "So now you can fly too? Way to make a guy feel appreciated..." "Reed, what was that, and when can I get one?"

Reed took a moment to carefully monitor the green object's decent, it was still moving through the atmosphere, which meant he had time to answer his teamates questions. "Firstly, it's a newly designed high thrust generation and direction system, or to put it simply, a jet pack. Secondly, Ben comparing what I just did to what you can do is like comparing your average circus contortionist to what Susan can do.

I effectively strapped a miniature rocket engine to my back, and it only had three settings, full, low, and off. Low is designed to break falls and as you can see in full... well if Susan hadn't been there to give me a hand, I probably would have shot right by you, and then headed right back down towards the ground at an even faster pace.

As for making you one of your own Johnny, that will have to wait until I'm confident I've worked all the kinks out of this one. Which in turn will have to wait until we find out exactly what intentions Earth's newest guest has." The thing apparently cleared the atmosphere just fine and the first that had been pointlessly burning around it went out.

Reed watched it and began doing calculations, it really was quite simple. Assuming that thing continuned not to engage any sort of forced to counteract gravity's pull, guesstimate the weight and trajectory... "Well one small mercy is that it looks like it's going to come down in the center of a park rather than slam into some building that would need to be evacuated beforehand." There others just looked at him and Reed shrugged before engaging the Fantasticar's engines sending team off towards where he expected the craft to touch down.

If he was right so much the better, and if it looked like he was going to be wrong, well he'd just have to modify his calculations as the variables changed around them. Sure enough, it didn't take long before Reed's guesses proved right on the money, expect for one small factor. Just as the ship was about to crash into a small pond it did, something that even Reed wasn't quite sure of, and then it shifted to the left slightly and settled gently onto solid ground.

Up close the thing was about the size of your average mobile home more or less. A gangplank lowered from it, and then a figured emerged from it. He was wearing some kind of strange purple outfit, though of course the more processing fact was that he had lime green skin, pointed ears, and a very, very, familiar looking chin that was cleft four times over.

He was a skrull, a group of extraterrestrial shapeshifters, who had tried to discredit the Fantastic Four as way of making earth weaken itself before they stepped in and invaded it. Reed had helped the others clear their names, and then by impersonating the skrull strike team sent down to impersonate them, they'd managed to convince the skrulls that invading Earth would be a very, very bad idea.

But apparently you could only fool beings smart enough to achieve faster then light travel for so long. Still, why had they arrived in this particular manner? Reed had expected that if they came back the skrulls would send either another subtly inserted strike team, or just invade emass. Just one skrull arriving openly, much to his shagrin Reed hadn't really considered that possibility.

Was he here as some kind of diplomat? Of course the flag that this skrull slammed into the ground a few moments later made a rather convincing argument against the validity of that theory. Not to mention the words that were obviously amplified (and possibly translated as well) by some hidden device that came from his throat a moment later. "Attention earthlings, you and your entire planet are now a territory of the Skrull Empire!

Surrender yourselves peacefully and you will survive, fail to do so, and you will be firmly instructed in the error of your ways..." Ben cracked his knuckles. "Reed, you can set this thing down wherever you like, but right now I feel like 'instructing' a certain green man from outer space on the error of his ways! That good with you?"

Reed quickly began to scan the nearby areas, figuring out where in fact he was going to land the Fantasticar. "Take a shot at it Ben, but be careful, we've got no ideas what kind of weapons that ship might possess, and this even if he doesn't look like much at the moment every skrull is a shapeshifter, don't be afraid to pull back if you need to."

Ben nodded and sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I get the idea. You three be the armor, I'll be the airborne rangers who drop in first and feel out the situation so you guys know where to attack when you arrive." With that he jumped out of the Fantasticar wings beating furiously.

--

The gust of wind Ben's wings generated knocked over the alien's flag as he landed nearby. He hadn't been intending to do that, but it was a rather nice touch. "You know considering that the last group of you guys who went out of their way to mess with us are currently off grazing on grass, maybe you should realize just how large a chunk of meat you're tearing off."

The skrull unsurprisingly wasn't backing down. "Ahh Dragonfly of the Fantastic Four, how fortuitous. I am a warrior of a different calibre then those who came before me. What they hopped to accomplish by trickery, I will do through overwhelming might. You will see and experience first hand why I am known as Super Skrull, because I have each and everyone of your powers!"

As he spoke, a pair of purple leathery wings even larger then Ben's. Granted if the alien though this would be enough to impress Benjamin Grimm then he didn't know who he was dealing with. "Big deal, you've got wings, lets see how you handle them." He beat his wings, jumped into the air and took off, and the Super Skrull followed suit a few moments later. Much to Ben's embarrassment he also soon passed Ben.

"Okay, you're fast, let's check out your manueverability!" For a response Super Skrull banked, and suddenly one of his wings got longer and slammed into him. Ben found himself randomly tumbling through the air, until suddenly a giant blue gloved hand wrapped around his body and anchored him. Ben shook his head for a moment to clear it, and managed a weak smile. "Thanks Susy, next time we're running low on money you should consider joining the fire department, you'd make a dam fine net."

--

Susan nodded, glad to see that Ben had gotten his wits back about him again, she released him. After all, they had bigger fish to fry, Super Skrull was looping around and heading towards the Fantasticar. Without further ado she curled her body into a sphere about the size of your average basketball, bounced off the Fantasticar, and straight at their green skinned opponent.

For his part, Super Skrull was kind enough to just hover there in space, so she didn't need to make any last second adjustments in course. Right before she slammed into the alien, she unfolded her body and firmly enveloped the alien invader. On one hand the plan worked like a charm, because with her binding Super Skrull's wings he started plummeting towards the ground like a stone.

One the other hand, when they'd last shown up she'd wrestled with one of the shapeshifting skrulls, and this felt noticeably different. The skrull had tried to shift in mid fight but even doing so it's body was soft like putty with none of the firmness that Susan's elastic frame could bring to a fight. This on the other hand, this felt like she was wrestling with herself, and it wasn't a enjoyable sensation.

She had to fight tooth and tail every moment, but in the end she perceived, still being on top when the two slammed into the ground. Except that no sooner had she taken a moment to catch her breath then her captive wanted to have another go. Susan gave all she had, but Super Skrull was too powerful, he was stronger, could stretch farther and faster then she did, and slowly she found herself in the utterly illogical predicament of being trapped within the grip of a foe who was even better at manipulating their body then she was.

For a few moments all was darkness, and she was nothing a than a minuscule blob trapped within some portion of her foes body. She had no idea how long it went on for, but then all of a sudden there was light and sound again. "Get off my sister!" Apparently the Fantasticar had landed and Johnny had made a beeline straight for Super Skrull, and the blow her brother had just dealt him created the opening she needed.

Unfortunately as she slipped out and reformed herself she saw it was also all that he had achieved. Super Skrull's body had slightly elongated around Johnny's blow just like her's would have, but then Super Skrull did something she never would have considered herself capable of.

He flexed his elongated body around Johnny's arm, then twisted his midsection hurling Johnny over his shoulder like an interstellar judo throw. Johnny slammed into one of the many trees into the park, but considering one was metal and the other was wood which one broke was a rather forgone conclusion. Johnny stood back up, evidently taking a moment to ponder exactly the same question that Susan was considering: how exactly did they harm a foe who was apparently as tough and strong as him, while being as flexible as her?

Unfortunately while Susan was busy pondering that question, she never even saw the uprooted tree headed towards her back. "See how powerless you are before me? My telekinesis allows me to strike you in whatever manner and from whatever direction I wish without even needing to lift a finger!"

At least squeezing herself out from under the tree was easy. In the process she instinctively and utterly inappropriately took a moment to rub her belly, reminding herself that even after taking those blows her kids were still perfectly okay. Though if one of them didn't find a way to stop the Super Skrull soon it was probably only a matter of time until they weren't, and considering that Johnny was currently pinned underneath another tree that Super Skrull had telikenticly ripped out of the ground it wasn't going to be him.

"I think that's more than enough." Super Skrull turned to look at Reed as he calmly walked forward, as if he was just going for a stroll in the park, and had chosen to wear his suit of high tech armor rather then put on suntan. Super Skrull raised his right hand, which grew to the size of a normal person's body, Susan didn't want to think about just how much force that fist could strike with. "Who are you?"

Reed's eyes glanced towards the fist for only a moment. "I'm Mr. Fantastic, and obviously you skrulls haven't been paying as close attention to Earth as you could have. I suggest you leave now, or else." An alien eye brow rose slowly. "Or else what?" Somehow it seemed like the metal mask Reed was wearing managed to smirk, or possibly Victor Von Doom had just designed it with that look in mind.

"This armor happens to have enough concealed weaponry to reduce both you and your ship to cinders. However, I'd prefer not to resort to such measures because of the collateral damage they'd inevitably cause." Super Skrull scowled at Reed. "You're bluffing..." "This armor was designed by one of the most brilliant and twisted men I've ever known, I've been improving on it for the last three months.

You didn't even realize that I'd gotten a body back, and it apparently took your commanders about half a year to tell the difference between reality and clips from a couple of horror movies, something tells me that you're not in a position to tell me what humanity can and can't accomplish. So exactly how confident are you of that estimate?" Super Skrull turned his back to Reed. "I don't have time for this foolishness, besides better to let the people of this city see you all slinking away like the cowards you truly are.

I'll allow you and this city 24 of your Earth hours to realize the error of your ways, and surrender peacefully. Fail to do so, and I'll start tearing it apart brick by brick." With that he calmly walked back inside his spaceship, and though the ramp went up the ship itself showed no signs of moving from its resting place. It was an utterly silent ride back to the Baxter Building that followed that announcement.

End Chapter six.


	7. Chapter 7

Before I kick this chapter off I'd just like to thank MarvelousMariaah for her review.

Swelling with love chapter seven: Strategy: In which Reed Richards comes up with plans and Susan Storm helps with implementation.

"You know Reed, I appreciate the way you managed to bluff Super Skrull into giving us a full day to find some way to defeat him, but don't you think you could have pitched in and at least tried to help while me and my sister were getting the stuffing knocked out of us?" These were the first words that had been spoke aloud among the Fantastic Four, and Johnny had managed to keep them behind his lips up until the Fantasticar had finished setting down inside the Baxter Building's hanger.

"Possibly, but it was far from the best move given our situation. My bluff was a rather risky strategy already, and if my armor had been anything less than a total unknown to Super Skrull it would have been even riskier. Granted, if it hadn't worked I could have always use my armor's remote control systems to ram him with the Fantasticar which probably would have bought us the time we needed to retreat, but this way we got the time to assess our problem, and didn't need to sacrificing our main mode of transportation, not to mention the time and resources that went into building it.

Besides, while I'll admit to you it probably looked as if I was just standing around, in actuality I was observing." Ben's wings flapped in irritation, he hadn't even been able to bring himself to have another go at Super Skrull after his first defeat. "So what did you observe professor?" "I'm not sure."

Susan's tongue started to take up just a bit more space in her mouth then it had a moment before, but she quickly got it back to its orrigional size. "Reed, there are times when the absent minded scientist routine is endearing, but while the entire city, if not world is being threatened by an apparently invincible alien deffiently isn't one of them."

Reed removed his armor's metal facemask so that the other three could see him smile. "Over the last month I've been installing additional sensor equipment to my armor and setting up a system to relay it straight into the Baxter Building's computers. I'd like to make it a two way system that would let me actually view my machines' calculations in the field, but that's something to worry about later on.

When we reach my lab there should be a veritable cornucopia of information waiting for us on Super Skrull, though I think only one piece of it will really matter if my initial estimates of him are correct." "And for those of us playing along at home, those initial estimates are?" Reed couldn't help smirking so profoundly that it should be obvious even to his teamates standing behind him, after all Victor had a face built for smirking.

"That Super Skrull is no more powerful then your average skrull, and that by the time his 24 hours deadline is over, so will be the threat he posses to Earth." Ben reached out and grabbed Reed's shoulder. "So you're saying that he's just faking having powers like the Miracle Man did?"

Reed was torn between how best to politely brush off his old friend, and a deep desire to get to his lab so he could look over the data he'd gathered. "Not exactly. You see my suspicions were aroused the very moment I had time to ask myself a single logical question, If the skrulls have managed to find some way of imbuing their soldiers with all of our powers why send just one?"

Johnny cast his eyes downward in desperation. "How about because much as I hate to say it, one seemed to be more then enough to deal with us" Reed shook his head, and looked at Ben closely as he lifted the from his shoulders, then turned back around and continuned heading for his lab, explaining to the three behind him along the way.

"While that is a possible explanation, it is far from the most logical one. You'd think they would have sent four such warriors, so that they could well and truly overpower us if time was the only issue behind how many Super Skrulls they could create. I think that they only sent one, because one is all they could ever have to send, and if I'm correct for the reasons I suspect then I'll have conclusive proof inside five minutes..."

They reached the door of his lab and with but one really well considered thought, they opened. The other three more or less just hung back silently as for a he took off his gauntlets, seated himself and then proceeded to let his fingers fly across the keyboard. Soon enough he had the data he wanted on the screen before him. "Wonderful, exactly as I suspected..." Susan stretched her neck over to get a better look. It was a grainy image that was for the most part completely black and white, except that Super Skrull was lit up like a Christmas tree, his body glowing with red, blue, green, and yellow light.

"So what is it?" Reed spun his chair around, his smirk growing even wider. "I realize it was a case of 20/20 hindsight, but after the accident that gave us our powers I started to preform quite a bit of work in the field of detect cosmic rays and the radiation they produce. Now as you'd expect at first glance Super Skrull's body is exhibiting four times the amount of cosmic radiation as our do..."

"Wait a minute, your saying that we're all shooting off more of the same stuff that transformed us in the first place? You could have told us about that a couple months back Reed! I mean how am I ever going to get a girl if just being in the same room as me could cause her to suddenly start mutating?"

Reed coughed and sighed. "I didn't mention it, because it's an inconsequential detail. Since my guess was correct I suppose I have time to fully explain it though. The storm that altered our DNA and gave us these powers had one uniform effect among the four of us, it caused our bodies to start producing low level amounts of cosmic radiation.

Yes Johnny, it is in fact of the exact same nature as those rays which gave us our powers, but its at an INCREDIBLY small level. To make this one hundred percent clear, there is exactly the same possibility that the radiation our bodies produce could giving someone else superpowers, as there is of someone getting sunburned from spending too much time under a seventy five watt lightbulb.

There simply isn't any sort of interaction we can have with another ordinary human being that could spread our condition, weather it's being in close proximity, blood transfusions, or sexual intercourse. Anyway, take a look at this and tell me if you see the same thing I see..."

Reed spun his chair back around, pressed a few more keys, and the image zoomed in to a considerable degree. Then he played around with what portion of the image was on the screen, until it was filled with an incredibly small glowing line that lead straight to Super Skrull.

"How about you tell us what you think we're looking at, and then we'll tell you wether or not we agree?" Reed sighed again, but there were more important things he could do with his time then chide his friends about their refusal to at least try and apply themselves to certain tasks mentally. "This, is a thinly focused beam of cosmic energy, doubtlessly originating from some skrull controlled planet.

Super Skrull has obviously been extensively modified allowing him to channel this energy into the form of our powers, but he doesn't internally generate the fuel for them the way we do. So while we might not be able to defeat a skrull who is in possession of all four of our powers, we can reduce Super Skrull to a state in which we can easily get the better of him."

Reed's smirk was catching, now it was on Susan's face. "So all you have to do is create some kind of signal jammier, we bring it with us, and watch how wide his eyes go when we turn it on?" Reed had no choice but to shake his head. "It won't be that easy I'm sad to say.

Skrull technoligy is easily several decades, if not flat out centuries ahead of what I have to work with. There's no way I'll be able to make something capable of jamming the signal in mid transition in twenty four hours. I'll need to try and stop it at either the origin or the end of the transmission, and since its origin point is doubtlessly well beyond our reach, we'll have to stop it at Super Skrull's end.

Give me a few hours, and I'll have a special helmet perfectly suited to the task. Getting it onto Super Skrull's head will be difficult of course, but once we've accomplished that feat, I think we can all agree that it'll be clobbering time." As it turned out he was getting just a bit full of himself. "You don't pronounce the 'G' Reed, but so long as you turn out the doodad we need, I'll worry about what to say while we're beating him black, blue, and whatever other color he burses.

So once you've made this helmet, which one of us do you think should play pin the hat on the skrull, Susy Q right?" Reed shook his head again, and spun his chair around one last time so that he could get to work.. "Hardly, I think you'd be the one best suited for preforming that particular task Ben."

There was silence in the room for a while, but not that long. "Wow, I don't know what to say..." Reed just shrugged. "Susan's greatest strength in combat is her flexibility, but this particular task calls for raw speed. The ability to recognize and act upon what may be an extremely small opening. If that's not an ability that your time in the airforce helped you cultivate, then I doubt you would have gone as far as you did. Now then, would it bother anyone terribly if I asked to be left alone for a while so that I can get down to work? I don't mean to be pushy, but as Susan pointed out, we've got a world to save."

--

"You're done already?" Susan's body a was currently curled in a set of three loops about the bed, like a cat that had started pacing its customary circles before laying down, but its back legs had never caught up to its front ones. "Well the sheer length that the cosmic energy the skrulls are beaming to Earth made it fairly easy to designing the necessary signal jamming helmet.

So I guess the only thing left to do is to is get a good night sleep, and let whatever comes tomorrow come. The plan should work, the three of us acting together might not be able to defeat Super Skrull, but I have every reason to believe we can distract him long enough for Ben to find the opening he'll need."

Susan's neck once again began to elongate itself till it hit the floor. But this time instead of being interested in hiding under the bed, it began to work its way across the floor towards him. "Well I can think of one more thing we might want to do tonight." Reed looked down at her head, and his eyebrows arched curiously. "Tonight?"

Back on the bed Susan's shoulders shrugged. "If you don't want to we don't have to. I just wanted to let you know in no ambiguous terms, I am totally up for it. You know, could be the end of humanity, don't want to die a virgin, and all that." Reed slowly made his way over (he had already taken off all of his armor and was only wearing his unstable molecule uniform and fleshy facemask) to the bed, and proceeded to literally fall into bed counting on a combination of the mattress and Susan's body to soften the impact.

He reached out with a hand and placed it upon Susan's belly. "Something tells me that you don't have much to worry about on that front. Besides, I would prefer to take some time and just lie here for a while, much as it shames me to admit it, I can't actually switch from complicated mathematical formulas directly responsible for saving the world to intercourse in the time it takes me to walk here from my lab." Susan retracted her neck till it was back on the bed, and twisted it to face Reed.

"Okay then, I'm good with just laying here and talking for a while. I thought what you did for Ben was very nice." Reed reached out and ran a hand along the prodigious length of Susan's neck. "I wasn't being nice, given our situation, Ben does have the best chance of exploiting Super Skrull's Achilles Heel." Various elongated parts of Susan's body twitched slightly.

"Yeah I know, it's just that the three of us can all take a punch from Super Skrull pretty well, but Ben wouldn't be so lucky." Reed nodded as Susan's began to retract her frame slightly. "Well as I'm fairly certain I've said before, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, both as people and as superheroes." Susan's tongue slid out of her mouth, and began to slowly lick the base of her lover's neck.

She also lengthened her lips, and with well practiced skill managed to successfully produce coherent words. "Well then, I guess we're all pretty lucky that you know us so well that you can pick out what we're best at. "Susan...?" Her tongue retracted back behind her lips so quickly one could almost imagine a cartoonish sound effect accompanying it. "Yes?"

"I know it may sound unromantic, but right now, all I really want to do is consider various possible stratagems that we could use against Super Skrull until I come across one that I'm utterly sure will succeed." Susan's let loose with a sigh that travelled all the way up and down her currently very long body.

"Well then why did you come in here?" Reed ever so gently ran a finger along one of the curls in Susan's hair. "Because sometimes nothing helps a man work like having his source of motivation at hand." Susan blushed and made the circles Reed was laying in the middle of just a bit smaller.

"You know I think it is safe to say that women are the same way. But even if you don't want to... you know... can we still snuggle?" Reed's finger began to work their way along the hair on the other side of her face. "I can't think of any way my motivation could be closer then if I was enveloped in it. Besides, look at it this way; Super Skrull is all that stands between what we can't do tonight because I'm still busy figuring out how to save the world, and what we can do tomorrow as a way of celebrating having saved the world."

If Susan had been able to dramatically crack her knuckles she would have. "When you put it like that, I don't think we'll even need Ben to slip a fancy helmet over his head, just give me one more good shot at him, I'll teach that green creep what happens to people who two screw around with Susan Storm's sex life!"

Reed just patted her head, nodded, kept his lips closed and laid back. Susan quite firmly coiled her body around his, ending the process with her right cheek laying against his chin, and then eventually her body went slack as she fell asleep. Reed for his part, just lay there, numbers, situations, and possibilities running through his head for what felt like hours on end. But eventually satisfied that he'd found the right moves to make, how to use his bishop, knight, and pair of rooks to take his opponent's queen, he lay back and allowed himself to surrender itself to sleep, not to mention Susan's comfortable embrace.

--

"Here you go Ben, just be careful with it, I made it as resilient as I could, but 'everyday wear and tear' hardly describes what it might end up being subjected to." Ben took the helmet that the four were staking their hopes on and inspected it closely. "It is a nice gizmo and all, but even if it takes away Super Skrull's ability to use our powers, couldn't he just shift his shape into something else, slipping out of the helmet and leaving us all right back at square one?"

Reed calmly pointed at what looked like an ordinary pair of fastening straps. "The thought had occurred to me. That's why I made these out of unstable molecules. Pull tight, attach them together like so around the back of Super Skrulls neck and I'm confident not even Susan would be able to slip out of them."

Ben looked at the straps for a moment, looked at Reed, and then nodded very slowly. "Right, that's exactly what I figured, just wanted to make sure." Reed got the distinct sensation that he was missing something, like when he was trying to do some calculations for a formula that was missing several of its key variables.

/Susan I might just be imagining things, but does Johnny suddenly look a little less silver and a little more grey all of a sudden?\ Susan for her part suddenly had look in her eyes that suggested she wanted to hang her neck until her chin hit the floor. /I'll explain it to you later Reed, now is neither the time or the place. Just trust me that he should be better by the time we actually start throwing punches.\

--

"I take it the three of you have come to surrender? Excellent, then all that will remain is hunting down Dragonfly..." Reed looked a the Super Skrull and keep his voice as neutral as possible. "Allow me to respond in the exact same way another famous group of Americans did when they found themselves the one thing keeping a superior hostile force at bay. Nuts!"

Reed raised his hands and fired a pair of full powered concussion blasts at Super Skrull who was caught flat footed. The two beams struck his chest, of course the only effect it had was bending the alien's body out of shape momentarily. But before he could pull himself back to normal. Johnny charged forward, and this time he was careful to wrap his hands around Super Skrull's' legs, twist around and hurl him away before the alien could turn the grip to his advantage.

This in turn left Super Skrull tangled around a tree like a piece of wet laundry. Susan hurled herself at him, determined that this time she wouldn't give Super Skrull room to slip out of her grip. She pulled it off to, completely covering the section of the tree the alien was wrapped around.

Unfortuently Super Skrull was far from defeated, he began to twist about, thrashing against Susan's body, and he was still stronger and capable of stretching farther then her, sooner or later he would get out, she was sure of that. But by the same token, Susan was determined to grit her teeth and stick it out until she could take no more.

It was an event that occurred after about thirty seconds of having something inside her that painfully wanted to get out, and she was quite sure that it was worse then giving birth to sextuplets would be. Granted that would be having something inside her that wanted out and she wanted to let it out, instead of something that wanted out, and she wanted to keep in, but this was no time for such thoughts.

She fell back, her body an currently looking like an outstretched cardboard cut out of herself. Then Super Skrull twisted his body and snapped the tree he had been wrapped around in half. The taller section of the tree fell towards Reed who broke it in half again with a well timed concussion blast, causing the two fourths of the tree to fall on either side of him. Then the Super Skrull stretched out and enveloped Reed. "I'll crush you and that armor into dust!"

Of course for the moment his armor's shield system was holding fine, but Reed was starting to seriously consider turning his jetpack on full blast, since nothing else was likely to have any chance of freeing him. Except that suddenly to the surprise of both of them Johnny proceeded to wrap his hands firmly around the tree stump Super Skrull was still attached to, and yanked it free from the ground.

"Let's see how you like being pulled like a piece of taffy!" Johnny began to take one step after another backwards, leaving the extraterrestrial even more elongated with each step. Super Skrull let loose with an inhuman growl. "Be gone pathetic human!" Apparently using Reed' telekinesis he pried Johnny's hands free from the tree and hurled him away.

Of course this resulted in something even Susan could have seen coming, the other end of his body snapped forward and ended up in one giant tangle around Reed's. Susan who had managed to catch her second wind hurled herself at Super Skrull, determined to prove that third time was the charm.

Meanwhile Mr. Fantastic instantly went from simply playing defensive against Super Skrull's less then overwhelming mental probes to launching an all out mental assault even as Ultra Woman was forcing him into a physical one. Then all of a sudden the air was filled with the sound of flapping wings.

Benjamin Grimm the Dragonfly spiralled out of the sky doing a dam near straight vertical dive. He hit the three hard, counting on the two thoroughly elastic beings to soften his landing, slamming the helmet in his hands over Super Skrull's head. The alien tried to twist around and stop him, but he was still only halfway through the process of throwing off Susan.

Ben yanked the two straps tight and connected them. The fight suddenly took a very dramatic turn as Susan now easily slid between Super Skrull and the other two yanking him aside.

The no longer quite so Super Skrull still thrashed about in the confines of Susan's body, but he couldn't shake the jamming device free, and no sooner had he begun to undulate slightly then Susan constricted herself even further around him, no longer having to fight a tooth and nail battle uphill for every single inch she gained or even to just hold onto what she had. Now, now she felt liken anaconda lazily and contentedly coiling itself around a squealing pig. "I and my kids can both be perfectly fine if my body is reduced to the size of a tennis ball. So go ahead, keep trying to escape, you came more then close enough to hurting the ones I care about to make me want to find out just how much I can compact your lungs before you start to have trouble breathing..."

Susan's captive wasn't the only one who went very still at those words. Though even as he physically surrendered Super Skrull was apparently far from daunted. "Bah, foolish humans, this changes nothing. Even if you managed to defeat me the Skrull Empire will gain control of you and this world sooner or latter."

"I don't think so." It really was impressive, the way Reed managed to make it sound as if he was simply proposing a hypothesis on some esoteric subject, like why exactly he dinosaurs had gone extinct. "I have no doubts that you skrulls may have an empire that spans distances we might not even be able to comprehend, but that doesn't matter. Nor does the fact that the average member of your species has powers considerably greater then the average human, in fact that's your greatest weakness."

There was something in Reed's voice (Susan didn't think he was using his powers but she could be wrong) that was leaving all four of his listeners spell bound. "You skrulls can assume whatever form you like, and while that's a quite impressive power for a single being to have, but when held by an entire species, it is anything but.

Want to know why? Because it makes you reactive instead of proactive. I have no doubt that you're empire has existed for considerably longer then humanity has, because I'm equally sure that's how long it took you to make anything of yourselves. It took humanity only 44 years to go from watching a stuttering machine that was barely able to gather enough power to lift itself and its single pilot into the air, to smashing a sound barrier that some had thought impenetrable. It took 25 years for us to go from using long range guided rockets as weapons of war to a means of travel between this world and our moon. How quickly did you the skrulls achieve those feats?"

There was only bitter silence which Reed took as all the proof her needed. "That's right. Like I said, reactive. If your leaders saw through the ruse we fooled them with the last time around there's only one reason why they would have sent you instead of simply attacking with all they have, they're afraid.

They're afraid of us, exactly the same way ancient mastodons many times our size were afraid of our 'puny' ancestors who hunted them with little more then wooden sticks coming to a pointy end that was made of stone or bone.

You skrulls might have found a way to duplicate our powers, but you'll never be able to capture the things that make us heroes: Ben's courage, Johnny's determination, Susan's compassion and my intelligence. Now then, since you no longer have my powers it'll be easy to deal with you the same way I did the members of the team you sent to impersonate us." Reed bent down and flipped a small switch on side of the helmet.

Almost instantly a pair of dark lenses slid out in front of Super Skrull's eyes. "What are you doing?" Reed straightened up his eyes looking at nothing in particular for the moment. To hypnotise the other four skrulls I had to settle for the old stand by of having Ben swing a watch back and forth while I 'chanted' mentally into their ears. This is much more sophisticated way of doing it, the swirling black and white patterns currently being displayed a few inches away from your eyes are guaranteed to induce disorientation followed by an actual hypnotized state in under a minute. At least they will with Susan holding your eyes open so you can't look away. So all we need to do is simply wait until I feel you mind going slack."

Time passed, and Reed evidently felt what he wanted to, because Reed's eyes narrowed with in concentration, Super Skrull's body began to shift and twist against his will. Susan uncoiled herself and reformed her body standing beside Reed as the skrull's a "no" of horror just kept getting longer and longer and longer until it turned into a surprise "mooo" as all the skrull warrior turned into an ordinary looking bovine, the jamming helmet still firmly attached.

Once the entire process was finished, Johnny just staired at their former opponent for a few moments before commenting. "Umm Reed, did you just make him turn into a cow, I mean a cow, cow? At least with the first four skrulls we ran into you let them keep their yah know..." Reed just rested a hand on the cow's nose. "Well on one hand who is to say that a shapeshifting species like the skrulls actually have any true concept of 'gender' the way we do? Secondly, I happen think of it as an effective way of sending a message to the Super Skrull's masters. If they're watching us right now, they'll be able to see that they're latest attempt to conquer earth has been, udderly defeated."

Ben put a hand to his face and sighed. "Jeez Reed, only you..." Reed turned his face his old friend with a surprised look in his eyes. "Only I would do what?" "Only you would give a great speech like that, and decide to cap it off with a joke that hurts worse then anything this reject from planet 10 could have done to us."

--

Needless to say, with the evil villain suitably thwarted, it was time to call another press conference so that they could let everyone know that they didn't have to cower in terror any more. Well do that, and touch on a few issues that were closer to home.

"By the time I'm done with my explanation, I hope to make it extremely clear that Susan Storm puts her children in less danger fighting supervillians then your average pregnant woman does getting into a car, either as passenger or driver." There was a lot of slack jawed looks of disbelief, and while these usually didn't start until Reed was about halfway into his explanations, he wasn't about to let their early appearance throw off his momentum.

"First of all, on the most basic level Susan's skin while resembling normal human flesh, is in actuality a organic rubber like compound. Not only does this make her body extremely resistant to blunt trama because of the way it moulds itself to bend with any blow instead of breaking, but it's also extremely tough.

Ultra Woman is not only has skin that can't be pierced, say by bullets, but also at most naturally occurring room temperatures can't be cut! Furthermore, because her children share her unique physiology..."

--

And so he went on and on, and on, as only Reed Richards could. And in all fairness, Susan didn't mind. She'd duked it out with a super, super (heck if you were going by the total number of powers possessed it was a super, super, super, super) powered alien bent on conquering the entire world . After doing that, she didn't mind the idea of having someone else taking a couple proverbial bullets for her.

Eventually Reed finally had run through all the necessary facts and figures and returned to language that the common man or woman could successfully wrap their head around. "Suffice to say, yes by remanning an active member of the Fantastic Four, Ultra Woman is exposing our children to danger. However, statically speaking, it is hard to imagine a situation in which a pregnant woman doesn't endanger herself and her children one way or another weather or not she's even aware of it.

Also understand, that if I hadn't already been able to conclusively prove that her children have inherited their mother's elasticity then we'd be having a very different converse since in that case even the slightest use of her powers might have had unforseen consequences. However, as the matter stands, Susan Storm is a unique woman in unique circumstances.

Ever since the Fantastic Four was founded, she's bravely faced down and done battle with dangers that ordinary women shouldn't have ever had to lay eyes upon. And until I see a noticeable decline in her performance as a superheroine or some new data comes to my attention that says her activities are putting our children at serious risk, I see no reason to tell her to cool her heels as either Mr. Fantastic leader of the Fantastic Four, or Reed Richards, father of her children and future husband. Susan?"

Susan stretched an arm over an graciously accepted he microphone from Reed. "Just so that you all get this right, I'm three months pregnant with six kids, ALL of them Reed's, and I don't doubt he'll be happy to supply you with the necessary information to that effect if you desire it. The reason none of you knew about this beforehand was because until we were ready to tell you I was able to use my powers to hide my pregnancy, which should say a thing or two about how effective I still can be as a superheroine. In closing, when I'm not stretching my current measurements are as follows..."

Just about every member of the press present suddenly looked like a hunting dog that had caught a whiff of fox in the air. Well so what? They were doing it when she wanted them to, and like Reed had said, if you knew you were going to be making a spectacle of yourself, it was infinitely better to control that spectacle then to let it control you.

--

"Well I think we've seen the worst of that particular problem." Susan hurled herself gratefully into bed, it had been a rough day for her to say the least, and she wasn't quite out of that 'why don't I just hibernate for a month or two' state of her pregnancy, if it hadn't been for her powers she probably would have been ending up getting ten or twelve hours of sleep and still felt unpleasantly tired.

"Yep, it's hard not to see what is right in front of you." Reed climbed into bed with her and coughed slightly, at his prompting Susan consented to have a pillow wedged under her. The entire "don't lay flat on your back" rule of pregnancy seemed rather silly to her, but it didn't really hurt to minimize the risks that you could minimize.

"Your being unusually sceptical." Susan sighed, rolling her eyes a complete three hundred and sixty degrees. "You know how you talk about having 'the burden of knowledge' sometimes? When because you know about something, you can't stop thinking about all the possible ways it can go wrong, while most other people just take it for granted?

You had about our flight into space for example, I'm sure the only reason you missed the cosmic ray shielding was because you were busy dealing with the umpty dozen other possible ways that something could have gone wrong with results that were guaranteed to be fatal.

But while you've got it about stuff like that, I've got it about this, because I actually have spent some time reading articles about what sin some celebrity has recently committed. Which is why I'm expecting the press to jump all over this, they're of course going to play up the fact that I basically was kind of sort of thinking about me and Ben having a relationship right before I got pregnant with your kids, and somebody, somewhere, is still going to claim that at least one of these kids is his.

Of course I wouldn't put it past them to try and turn it from a love triangle into a love square by getting Namor involved as well, even if they have to send reporters down in scuba gear and submarines to get quotes form him. We might as well learn to like the taste of cotton candy, cause a media circus is coming to town and they'll be pitching the tents right outside our front door!"

Reed reached down and slowly began to work the upper half of Susan's outfit up first over her belly, then her breasts, and finally her head. "Firstly, considering that it'd been three men who are all infatuated with you, that'd be more of a paramid then a square. Secondly, Let me tell you something that Ben was kind enough to tell me after one of the scientific works I'd published in college received a less then warm reception.

You can't please everyone, and at the end of the day its nothing but words on paper." Susan, blinked a tear from her eye as a scowl of dissatisfaction slowly turned to a smile. "Thanks, that actually is exactly the kind of thing I needed to hear to help me get things in perspective." Reed began to gently work Susan's pants down towards her ankles with one hand while he rubbed her belly with the other.

"Something tells me that perspective is something that I'll always have plenty of, if for no other reason then I can always think to myself 'well at least I'm not a brain in a jar any more' and find a silver lining to my current situation regardless of what it is. Besides, there's another bright side to all this, now that we've 'owned up' to the nature of our relationship, we don't need too stay cooped in here at all hours of the day having sex."

Susan's hands elongated, one of them working on the upper portion of Reed's body, one the lower, and by the time they were done their respective tasks both of them were down to their undergarments. "Really? I happened to like the 'let's find out of these walls really are soundproof' phase of our relationship.

Though I suppose now I can finally get to work shopping for the perfect wedding dress, or at least the perfect style of wedding dress, given that between being pregnant and elastic my measurements are more or less written in sand." Reed gently rested a hand on one of Susan's slightly milk engorged breasts. "That's the spirit. You doubtlessly aren't the first, and you probably won't be the last woman to ever find herself waddling down the aisle.

Granted I'll have to check the Ginus Book of World Records and see if they have a category for 'world's most pregnant bride' since that you might conceivably be setting some records in. At least if its measured in gap between pre-pregnancy figure and the one the woman in question has at the time of the wedding. If it's measured by how many days along the bride in question is then you wouldn't be so much as gleam in the eye of the current record holder whoever she is. Four or five months along? With a one child pregnancy that wouldn't even raise eyebrows at the altar."

Susan did Reed the favor of stretching an arm behind her back, letting her work at certain 'problem' from both sides at once. Ever since she'd discovered this particular "ability" if you wanted to call it that, she'd considered the only way for a girl to get her claspless unstable molecule bra off.

"So just for the record, you have been applying that brilliant brain of your's to the question of how exactly you're going to propose to me, right? Because now that I've gone and made my announcement to the world at large, it seems a little unfair that we had to set an exact date for when I'd let the public know about the half a dozen bundles of joy I've got the way, while when you are going to pop the question is still up in the air."

Reed removed his last article of clothing and then popped a different sort of question to Susan. "Above or beneath the covers?" Susan removed her panties and hung them in their traditional resting place. "Beneath for the moment, there are a few things I want to talk over before we put our trust in shared bodily warmth alone."

Reed nodded and adjusted his posture pulling some of the blankets that he had previous pushed towards the edge of the bed so that they covered him from the neck down. Susan worked her way under the covers through a rather unconventional (to someone who hadn't known her as Ultra Woman at least) series of stretches. All that said, they were both laying on their sides facing each other, and Reed could quite clearly feel her pregnant belly resting against his own considerably more angular misdirection. "Okay then, lets talk."

Susan whimsically blew a puff of air towards a strand of her blond hair that at least appeared to be threatening to fall over one of her eyes. "To start with, let me reiterate that question I asked about how we set a due date for my big announcement and not yours, just to make sure that we're both on the same page about where our relationship is going."

Reed carefully manuevered his right hand by touch alone underneath the covers until he had exactly where he wanted, and began to rub Susan's belly in slow circles as he spoke. "Well an engagement is like a butterfly, if you pin it down it might still look every bit as pretty as it used to, but it just isn't the same.

If I told you what day, when, where, and how I plan to propose to you, then it'd end up becoming one more chore that gets written up on a calendar so you know what day it needs to be done on. After all, a woman only gets proposed to by the love of her life once, in theory at least, so it should be an event every bit as special as you are."

Either his words or his actions (or some combination there of) had a profoundly soothing effect on Susan. "I don't see how I can argue with that. Just promise me it'll be before I'm five months along. That way I know it'll happen, but I'll still be in the dark about the specifics." "It'll be before you're five months along." Susan sighed approvingly. "Thanks. So with that out of the way, can I tell you something Reed?" "You can tell me anything Sue."

Sure enough just like he expected her arms grew longer and longer until they easily slid their way around his back. "The entire thing last night, where I threw myself at you a little bit more vehemently then normal even though we didn't end up doing anything... That wasn't because you figuring out a plan to stop Super Skrull turned me on, it did, but mainly I did it because I was afraid."

Reed wrapped his own arms around her back, though he only narrowly managed the feat. "Considering what was going on, you being afraid makes perfect sense." A feminine neck slid round Reed's own placing her lips right next to his ears. "No, I was afraid of more then that. Super Skrull made me realize, not ever foe we deal with is going to be dealt with as decisively as Victor Von Doom, or even Namor who we managed to more or less burry the hatchet with after our most recent meeting.

Some of them are going to go to ground, and then be ready to pop up, or drop down in the skrull's case when we least expect it. Realizing that, it scared not just the proverbial pants right off me, but panties as well. Because if they're willing to try and conquer the world, then they'd probably be willing, if not outright enjoy committing depraved acts in order to do it. And while my kids might have my powers, they're going to be born without knowing a lick about how to use them, and I've already got a list that's way too long of people who might try to get to me, or us, by way of them.

Especially if some of them get together, so that while we're out there stopping one of them, the other one is trying to get in here with my, with our children. Even with my powers I can only be in one place at a time, so I think about that, and it almost makes me wish I could be pregnant with them for a full decade so that they're born with at least some clue of how to look after themselves. But then, I think of you..."

Susan's legs slid round Reed's and her neck shifted a bit more so that they were both looking directly into the other's eyes. "I think of you, and I know that everything will be all right. Because while I might trust my body to keep them safe for nine months, I put my trust in your brain for keeping them safe for the two decades it 'll be before I fully trust them to be able to look after themselves.

Seeing stuff like how you dealt with Super Skrull, that makes me sure to my very nonexistent bones that its not just optimistic hope, but established fact that you'll be able to handle something so important and that difficult." She leaned in, and then Reed blushed slightly as he returned her kiss. "Bare in mind I am also the man who also almost got us also killed in the process of pursuing his own desires."

Susan's legs began to twist themselves even further down Reed's body, working their way towards the soles of his feet. "I prefer to think of it like this: how hard do you think it would have been to engineer a spaceship and line up our flight with such pinpoint timing and shield levels that we got useful superpowers instead of several other unpleasant possibilities.

If that's what your capable of achieving by accident, my mind reels at what you could do intentionally. Besides, as I understand it, our ship had more powerful cosmic ray shields then any one previously constructed, which I suppose brings to mind that famous phrase, about 'good enough for government work' and why we should be glad ours was better.

If it hadn't been for those stronger then normal shields, that incredibly strong cosmic ray storm would have blown us and our ship right out of the sky. And if you feel like you need more time to work at the task, so long as it doesn't put the earth in danger I'll be more then glad to do a mother snake routine and coil myself up around our kids dam near 24/7 until you've developed enough security measures to be confident that they'll be safe without me looking after them."

"Actually Susan snakes are more or less known for having very little in the way of maternal instincts. They usually just find a nest, lay their eggs and slither off." The amount of tension (in the sense of how firmly her grip was) in Susan's limbs decrease dramatically. "Okay then Mr. Fantastic, Ultra Woman will make like a member of whatever other group of animals you care to name that are known for their maternal instincts, and not let our children out of her sight, even if I need to figure out a way to grow extra eyes to do it. After all I've already figured out how to extend my eyes and twist them a full 180 degrees so that I can see what's going on behind me if I want."

Reed managed to work a hand free both of his lover's body and the covers, and used it to delicately stroke her cheek. "Personally I doubt you'll ever be able to grow extra eyes, but then I suppose I don't tell you what you can't do with your body, you don't tell me what I can't do with my mind. As for what animal is extremely well known for their maternal instincts, a lioness springs fairly readily to mind since they're widely known for not only said instincts, but also hunting prowess."

Susan didn't consider herself Reed's equal in any area of hard science, but she'd watched a nature show or two. "You know, there's a third area that lionesses are known for excelling at that I seem to be doing fairly well in..." "Considering that your average size of a litter of lion cubs is four, you're doing more then 'fairly well' in that particular area."

The expression on Susan's face went from friendly smile, to predatory bearing of fangs. "I was actually thinking more along the lines of how when they're in the mood they do it twenty to forty times a day apparently. Heck I'm kidding myself, we seem to be just barely reaching double digits on our good days, and while I don't like to point fingers, you do usually seem to be the one who gets tired first, just reporting the raw data you understand.

Luckily I have an ingenious plan for how to deal with this conundrum." Other men might have been at least mildly insulted by the way Susan was quite obviously doing the best impression she could of Reed's own manner of speech. Personally as long as she go her facts straight, Reed found it rather endearing. "Which is?"

All over his body Susan's grip grew a little tighter. "Same way your average athlete trains for a several mile race. You set a certain goal you feel comfortable with, and then just push yourself a little farther everyday. After all, sparring isn't the only way you can build up your endurance."

Reed could have pointed out that her particular 'exercise regimen' didn't do much to improve fighting instinct, but he found his lips rather occupied before the words could get from his brain to his mouth. Likewise he soon found that the kind of all but totally ignoring the world around him concentration necessary for telepathy considerably beyond him, so he decided having run out was to communicate that Susan was likely to understand, he might as well just run up the white flag and unconditionally surrender.

Besides, at the end of the day (or night) she did have a utterly sound theory, and any decent teacher should strive to reward their students when they succeeded.

--

After striving for a considerably longer time then he had against Super Skrull, Reed finally found himself utterly and most enjoyably exhausted. He did however managed to get out one sentence before he gave in to the desires of circulatory system and stared panting like a dog in the middle of the Sahara.

"By the way, if you're seriously worried about what people will think of you because of our announcement... I've got a plan for what we can do to handle that particular aspect of public relations." Susan Storm, who's face looked like just had she'd just been for a light jog continuned to smile as she wrapped her body tenderly around Reed's. "Of course you do, I was sure of that before either of us set foot in here."

--

Implementing Reed's plan involved him spending a considerable amount of time away from his lab, but much to Susan's surprise he didn't seem to mind. All it basically boiled down to was the two of them spending plenty of time in the public eye together doing the kind of things that couples were known for doing: holding hands, occasional pecks on the cheek, shopping for a few more child rearing related items that Susan had wanted to select personally, and now could without raising any eyebrows.

During these romps outside the Baxter Building Susan always wore her unstable molecule outfit, and had a ready reply on hand for anyone who asked her why. "Considering the changes a girl in my condition is going to find her figure going through it just makes more sense to stick and outfit that really is a 'one size fits all' garment then buy a new wardrobe for every trimester, if not every month."

Of course what went unsaid was the fact that this process left her belly very prominently on display. One good look at it and the woman who bore up surprisingly well under that particular burden made her status as both a superheroine and mother to be extremely obvious.

As it turned out, Reed's plan for dealing with the blow back that indeed had come after their revealing her condition to the press worked every bit as well as his one for dealing with Super Skrull, even if it took longer to fully carry out. Rather then allow the story to slowly simmer throughout the entire length of her pregnancy, if not even longer, the Fantastic Four had fought fire with fire and freely and repeatedly offered up all the information anyone could ask for about how the situation had come to be.

Short of "What position where you in on the night you conceived?" or similarly depraved questions, they were more then ready to respond to any inquiry with a smile and an honest answer. Yes they had figured out what church they waned to be married in, no they hadn't set a date yet, they were waiting to find out the sex of the children before they started thinking about names, just like when he had been taking his SATS there was not a question put forward that Reed Richards didn't all but instantly have an answer for.

Susan of course out of what had to be at least slightly masochistic desire also found the time to keep herself more or less current on what was being said about her. For the most part just like Reed had told her before hand, most of those who criticized her could have taught Ultra Woman a thing or two about how to tie themselves in knots, metaphorically at least.

How do you properly cast doubt upon the moral fiber of a woman who had decided to use her incredible powers for the good of others and subsequently succeeded in helping save the world (or at least sizeable portion of it) several times over when the only charges you had to marr her with were having sex before marriage?

Well there were those who just like she'd expected tried to play her up as literally bouncing from one man to another, and there wasn't much either of them could say on the topic. Ben on the other hand had gone on to make it abundantly clear that he and Susan had never been anything more then friends, and anyone who felt like saying otherwise might up winning a special interview with him that took place ten feet over the a reasonably deep pond. Namor's response had been even more vociferous though it'd needed to be edited somewhat before it could properly broadcast to the surface dwellers who were apparently foolish enough to besmirch the name of his woman he would have gladly called his queen.

There were of course those who hadn't been at the original press conference and decided to question her decision to remain an active member of the Fantastic Four. Whenever she found one, either by hearing them on TV or reading something they'd written she passed their names along to Reed who proceeded to deal with them in the fashion he considered most appropriate, honest open scientific debate.

While for the most part he was chivalrous to a fault, Reed Richards didn't have the slightest problem engaging an effectively unarmed opponent in a battle of wits for Susan's sake. The subject of such one sided 'battles' personally found observing them so sweet and tasty that she was sure that just watching them was making her hips spread further apart, granted that could have just as easily been her kids continuing to make themselves at home inside her body.

Either way, the results were always the same more or less, your average person getting involved in a scientific debate with her husband to be was more or less equivalent to boxing a glacier. You could throw whatever kind of punches you'd like, they'd one and all be utterly ineffective. Then by the time Reed was done making his long winded arguments complete with scrupulously fair pauses to further explain anything that his opponent seemed to be having trouble comprehending, the glacier would have either rolled right on over you or pushed you off whatever chunk of land you'd been standing on and back into the sea.

So Susan Storm couldn't help but smile as she watched Reed simply sitting there like a sleeping lion who had awoken by a hyena chewing on his tail. First there was sort of calm irreverence, which gave way slowly to irritation, which in turn gave way to him letting loose with the kind of roar that didn't have a chance in hell of being misinterpreted.

Net result? One more person who would never even consider questioning if Susan Storm was acting in a manner inappropriate for a woman in her condition. Except that unlike the metaphorical lion, Reed would do it all without ever needing to raise his voice in the slightest. Susan's smile grew even larger as she comfortingly rubbed her belly.

"Daddy takes good care of all seven of us doesn't he? Could be maniacal aliens, self righteous members of our own species, or anything else, by the time he's done with em they all head for the hills and never look back."

Had she possessed the proper vocal chords, she might have let loose with a thoroughly contented purr. Just because he disdained raw violence as a solution for all of life's problems didn't mean Reed Richards had difficulty making his mate feel safe and secure.


	8. Chapter 8

Seeing as it's mother's day and all I decided it'd be appropriate to post the next chapter of my story feature Marvel (assuming there's someone at another comic book company that could possibly dethrone her) Queen MILF, Susan Storm/Richards even if in this story she still has a few more months to go.

Swelling With Love Chapter Eight: Experience. In which Reed Richards gives a speech or two, and Susan Storm discovers someone else interested in her affections.

The Fantasticar was zipping across the New York skyline drawing more then a few irritated squawks from birds who momentarily put out by yet another human encroachment upon what had once been their uncontested domain. Of course unlike most times the Fantasticar saw use, its occupants weren't reacting to some emergency that if left unchecked might put the entire city, if not the world in danger. Instead the Fantastic Four were simply headed off to one of any different locations that had requested a chance to play host to a lecture by the quickly becoming world famous Reed Richards, also known as Mr. Fantastic.

Of course there was something unusual about this event, not only because Reed turned down most of the offers he got along those lines (superheroing had to come before reaping the benefits it brought or else you weren't much of a hero) but also because the rest of the team was coming. Susan might have normally at least considered coming to such lectures knowing full well that every other word would go over her head, but Ben and Johnny would normally rather have gone a couple rounds with most supervillians then listen to their leader pontificate at length.

Except that particular lecture was going to be at Reed and Ben's shared almamater State U. so the entire team had decided that lacking some supervilliany which needed to be thwarted, they might as well make a day of it. Jonathan "Johnny" Storm put his feet up as he looked over the edge of his seat, an action that most people would have promptly regretted, but he just laughed.

"This is the only way to travel, no red lights, no traffic, no pedestrians, and no complicated turns. Being a superhero really does have some nice perks!" Johnny had to shout slightly as the one down side of simply cursing right on over every possibly obstacle they might encounter was a somewhat fierce wind resistance made even worse by the speed at which they were moving. "Frankly I'm still amazed that I will actually get a chance to lecture at the place whose educational facilities made me into the man I am today..."

Reed didn't speak as loudly as Johnny, his mind more or less completely absorbed in the enormity of the honor he was receiving, and the task of keeping the Fantasticar in the air. Luckily as he was seated at the front, the wind blew his words back to his three teamates. Despite the fact that it was tempting every single passing gust to play havoc with her hair, Susan stretched her neck forward till her lips were right next to Reed's ears, the only way she could sure that he would hear her.

"You're really surprised that they invited you? Reed you are not only well beyond being simply an intellectual credit to the school, but you're also a celebrity, personally I'll be surprised if they let you leave without offering you tenure in at least half a dozen different positions." Reed nodded slowly as Susan retracted her neck and then ducked her head as best she could (the process involved a little stretching and squeezing) before getting to work undoing the way her hair now hung pell mell about her face without rhyme or reason. Another fierce gale of wind caught them and the group remained silent for the rest of the journey.

--

State U. had been kind enough to make sure a large grassy area was available for them to set the Fantasticar down in. In fact someone had even gone so far as to apparently dye some of the grass blue creating an extra large replica of the group's insignia upon it, just so that there was no chance of them missing it. Reed as always landed the vehicle so gently that it wouldn't have awoken a sleeping infant and as he undid his seatbelt he turned around to look back at the other three members of the team, though his attention was mainly directed towards one in particular.

"Need any help getting out Sue?" Susan shook her head as she undid her own seatbelt, though during the act she couldn't help but wonder why she bothered with one. It wasn't likely even the worst crash could harm her much, and one way or another her body would always end shifting about to absorb the impact, a process that would most likely involve her slipping right out of the seatbelt, if not the Fantasticar itself.

"No thanks Reed, in addition to her many crime fighting and domestic talents Ultra Woman is perfectly cable of getting from her seat to the ground a couple feet below. True to her words Susan simply flowed out of her seat, over the side of the Fantasticar, landed in a bloblike bundle on he ground and then resumed her fully human form. Johnny got out of his seat and jumped to the ground without ever assuming his armored Mandroid form for protection.

Reed in his armor had no trouble leaving his seat without incident and Ben took off from his seat, rose up to about 20 feet in the air for a few moments, and then landed next to the other three. "Well, I'd say it looks just like I remember it, but I couldn't exactly grab a birds eye view last time around could I?"

Reed nodded, even as he looked left and right memories of classes he'd taken or other activities springing to the forefront of his mind, his body made it's way over to Susan. He worked a hand under her distended midsection which would have lead any uniformed observer to suspect she was much farther along then her "paltry" four months. Susan shivered slightly at he feel of the cold gauntlet against her outfit, but she didn't draw away.

"That's kind of you Reed, but it's not really necessary. Like you've pointed out, because of my body, I don't get tired from carrying around my belly." Reed took his eyes off the campus, turning his gaze so it directly met Susan's head on. "Since when are relationships about doing only what's necessary?" Susan shivered again, but his time in delight, it warmed her entire body from the soles of her feet to the highest curl of her hair to hear practical as the day is long Reed Richards talking to her like that.

Needless to say, between the Fantasticar and the appearances of the four people who had been using it, the group was quickly starting to draw a crowd, one of whom approached them. "Doctor Richards, I'm so glad that you can make it, though you arrived a bit earlier then we expected you to." The man was much older then most of the onlookers, obviously an professor rather then a student and as he approached with his hand out Susan whispered a couple quick words in Reed's ear.

"You might want to shift positions and use your left hand to support my belly unless you want to give him a very clumsy handshake." None of the four members of the team were southpaws or ambidextrous, and the professor was offering Reed his right hand as he walked forward. Reed responded with a few quickly whispered words of his own. "My right hand belongs right where it is, looking after the most important thing in the world to me."

Susan blushed and felt another shiver of delight go through her. Which was why the two men ended up exchanging an awkward handshake with both of them using their nonpreferred hands. Ben needed only one look a the situation before putting hand on Johnny's shoulder. "Come on kid, let's get out of here before we have to listen to genius speak in stereo. I'll even show you around the place, this isn't the first college campus you've been to right?"

Those two departed, well on their way into another one of their friendly arguments. Susan and Reed meanwhile stuck around and since they had in fact arrived two hours before Reed's scheduled lecture it didn't take long till questions started heading their way. At first they were mostly about Reed's work in various fields and the exact content of his lecture but fairly soon they turned towards slightly more personal topics.

"So just for clarification, what exactly is the current state of the relationship between you two?" Seeing as Reed had handled he scientific questions Susan decided she might as well answer that one before people started to forget that she could talk, or was even there. "At the moment it is technically just serious boyfriend and girlfriend. That said, we've already picked out the church, and set up reservations.

The only reason that we're not engaged yet is because Reed wants to make sure that when he does pop the question to me, it's the magical event every woman deserves it to be." "So how has pregnancy been treating you, is being pregnant with sextuplets as much of a chore as it sounds like?" Susan took a moment to use her own right hand to rub the top of her belly for emphasis before responding.

"Actually it isn't, at least not for me. For Susan Storm it probably would have been two tasks and a half, but for Ultra Woman it's surprisingly bearable. After all, even if I end up 'bedridden' I can still easily stretch my arms and neck halfway across the Baxter Building to pick up whatever I need.

As for how it's been treating me, well I'll admit those first three months had there downs and ups. For example, I can remember plenty of times that my meals would go down and then back up my throat. Not to mention there were times that I felt like I might just curl up for a nap and not wake up until after I'd given birth. Pregnancy is funny like that, the first trimester can be really rough as your body comes to grips with just what is happening to it, but once it does you starts to feel pretty good.

So now that I'm into my second trimester I once again feel vibrant enough to be literally bouncing off the walls." Of course no sooner was one question answered, then another raised its head. "Do you have any concerns for safety of your children, did it ever occur to you that maybe you should quit the Fantastic Four, or at least take a leave of absence?" Susan favored the crowd with a warm smile. "Of course I've got worries about my kids, I can't a imagine a pregnant woman who doesn't, especially when they've gone and pissed off half a dozen different diabolical masterminds recently.

That said, Reed's proved conclusively that my children are able to stretch their still forming bodies the same way I am, so in reality I've actually go less to be afraid of then most mothers. I can get punched, shot, and otherwise suffer what to others would be severe physical trama and not worry about that it might cause me to have a miscarriage. Which is the same reason why I haven't considered quitting the team even on a temporary basis.

Since my belly doesn't really get in my way at the moment, and I'm not starting my day by revisiting last nights dinner, I might as well give the team everything I got, and that's quite a lot. Reed or any of the others can attest how vital I was to defeating Super Skrull a few weeks back to pick one example at random.

It may be a little cold blooded, but I think we can all agree that it was better that I was there helping them then off at some resort spa. Besides, if the team gets in trouble because I'm not with them, you can bet that the next thing the evil villain behind it will do is come gunning for me. So like they say, there's strength in numbers, especially when those numbers represent people who really care about you."

"So why did you change your hair style?" Susan gave her head of blond locks a good shake, and let everyone present get a good look at her wide sparkling smile. "Thanks for noticing. I decided the old look was a little too quaint, even if in a timeless kind of way. So I decided to try something different today, If I like how it feels, I'll keep it. If I don't I'll probably go back to my previous one or possibly try some different third style till I find what feels just right. One of the advantages of elastic hair is that I can change styles in about five seconds instead of five hours, so I figure why not experiment?"

Instead of the pair of curls that framed her came to rest at more or less at shoulder height, Susan's blond hair though still curly rather then straight fell down her back to the length of just an inch or two past her breasts. Of course what Susan didn't say was that she'd originally decided on that hair style before she'd gotten her powers a subtle throw back to the image of an earlier era's perfect domestic housewife. Needless to say like a couple other signals she had thrown his way Reed had never really noticed.

She'd kept it after getting superpowers for various reasons. Firstly because she'd quickly discovered that her hair seemed to be in stasis, it didn't grow, and she couldn't cut it. Then after she'd figured out the trick to shaping her hair, she'd kept it because there hadn't been any particular need or desire to change it.

But now that she'd gotten knocked up, told the public about it, she'd decided there was no time like the present to let her hair down in more then one sense. Reed didn't seem to truly care one way or another, but Susan found it a helpful reminder that it was "Ultra Woman" not "Ultra Girl" (granted her current status of mother to be was also rather difficult to argue with evidence in favor of the former) and since pregnancy seemed to be agreeing with her, why not play that sparkle it gave her tresses to the hilt for all it was worth?

"What about your outfit?" That one really did throw Susan for a loop since unlike her hair she hadn't changed the style of her outfit recently. "What about it?" The person who posed the question stuttered for a few moments as he got his thoughts in order. "As your body really starts to show that your pregnant, haven't you considered changing to something a bit less revealing?"

Susan snorted in indignation. "Less revealing? Considering that this thing covers me from the shoulders down the only way I could make it less revealing is to add a veil!" Of course she understood what the man was getting at. Unstable molecule outfits couldn't exactly be said to leave nothing to the imagination, but they were always by their nature skin tight.

Not that Susan minded, she was actually starting to become rather fond of her fecund figure, which her unstable molecule uniform flattered wonderfully. For one thing, she'd always been a bit mindful of her breasts (or lack there of) and that subject had stayed on her mind even after she'd gotten her powers. Yes she could use them sculpt her body into an absurd hourglass with boobs that were larger then her head and a waist thinner then her arms, but the effect was painfully artificial, the elastic nature of her endowment far too obvious.

One of the upsides to pregnancy however was that entailed mother nature's own version of a boob job, and like in a great many other fields, mother nature was years ahead of what the best plastic surgeons had to offer in that particular area. All in all, the blue outfit did a wonderful job showing off the curves of her body, and they were curves Susan Storm was proud of, even the big one that her midsection had turned into.

Just like Reed had pointed out a few months back, her current state spoke mainly of her unusually great fertility (the idea of being pregnant with six children at once certainly felt like an event every bit as rare as the storm of cosmic rays that had given them their powers even if she knew deep down it wasn't true) and Reed could doubtlessly go on for hours about how in some societies how fertile a woman was would in turn define how beautiful she was considered to be.

That was a little sexist of course, since the underlying message was that the only thing of value women did was produce children, but somehow that particular idea never quite made it from Susan mind to her rest of her body during those nights when even as he spoke Reed showed her how the men of those tribes had worshipped the pregnant female members. That kind of thing did wonders for a girl's ego, something that could deffinently use plenty of encouragement when she was (whatever the circumstances) four months along with six children an unengaged.

So as long as she had it, she saw no problem with 'flaunting it' to the extent that her outfit did since it was of the exact same cut as the ones Ben, Johnny and Reed wore, it wasn't as if she was out there fighting crime in some miniskirt that couldn't get much shorter without becoming a belt in the process. "Considering that the Fantastic Four's members puts themselves out there for the public to fully inspect unlike many other superheroes, exactly what message do you think people should be taking away from you two's actions?"

Luckily Susan had more or less been expecting this question (in fact it wasn't even the first time they'd been asked some form of it) from the start so she had her answer well planned. Before she even spoke she began to twist her body from he breasts up around Reed's. "The message that I want people to take away from this is that love can find you just about anywhere if your willing to accept it. Reed's undergone a lot of changes since he gained his powers, but I was in love with him beforehand, and so I'd say I'm read to resolutely stick it out to the end through whatever other changes he goes through, but that isn't true.

The wonderful thing about love is that there's no 'end' for you to stick it out to, true love just keeps going on forever, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. My biggest worry when Reed first regained his body was that because of how my powers might have changed my own body, I wouldn't be able to have his children. If I'd been smarter I probably would have remembered that age old saying about 'be careful what you wish for, you just might get it' but I didn't, and subsequently as you can all see quite clearly, oh boy did I get it.

But if sometimes you just have to take what life gives you weather you asked for it or not. Luckily thanks to my powers I've proved pretty adept at rolling with the punches, whatever form they take." "Doctor Richards do you have anything to add to that statment?" "Nothing except to say that I could go on for hours trying to logically find a way to express what Susan just did in a few minutes and not come up with a description anywhere near so apt." There were "oohhs" "ahhhs" and indeed Susan felt suitably pleased with herself.

--

"Excuse me Doctor Richards, but I'm Professor Gilbert, and I was wondering if I could get your professional opinion on something that I've been working on? Reed twitched a finger and a lens slid over his right eye with a digital time display on it. He still had plenty of time left before the lecture he'd been scheduled to give. "I don't see why not. Susan would you care to come along or wait here?"

"Please, you think I'm letting you out of my sight? Besides, I'm already planning on listening to one lecture I can't really understand today, might as well go for two. Just so long as there's a nice comfy chair waiting for me wherever its given."

Around about half of the crowd, more or less dispersed as Professor Gilbert lead Reed and Susan along towards his lab, with the other half still following them. Eventually when they got to the office in question Susan seated herself, and Professor Gilbert motioned towards a large tarp that was apparently covering something of a quite massive scale.

"What do you think of this?" He yanked aside the tarp, and a few members of the crowd that where still following them around momentarily jumped backward, though luckily no collisions resulted from this unplanned movement of bodies. Reed didn't particular blame them. The thing in question was like nothing he'd ever seen, it was about ten or twelve feet tall (it was hard to tell the things true height if it had been standing up straight since it was crouched slightly) and had darked grey skin.

It had a pronounced ridge in its forehead, and arms that were like a Tyrannosaurus Rex's seemed slightly too small for the body they were attached to. Its hands had only four digits, but they were also obviously intended to be three fingers and an opposable thumb. A large pair of wings grew from its shoulders, and an even larger tail lay coiled at the things feet, and it was 'dressed' in what was effectively an appropriately sized pair of purple shorts.

Reed carefully examined each and every single aspect of the statue before he commented. "Well Professor Gilbert I'd feel more comfortable making comments if you'd explain what exactly this thing is suppose to be." Professor Gilbert nodded understandingly. "Very well then. If the emergence of humanity as the most dominant form of life on the planet has proven anything, it's that in the long term intelligence is the most beneficial of all possible traits for a species to evolutionally develop.

Also it is equally obvious that even if size of brain isn't the only factor that determines intelligence, certainly it is one of the factors. In turn clearly size of an animal's brain has to be related to overall size of the animal, or else the creature wouldn't be able to move it's own cranium.

Now, one of the widely prevailing theories about how the dinosaurs died out was that a meteor struck the Earth, and it proceeded to kick up a considerable cloud of dust into the atmosphere which created a near perpetual cloud cover, leading to a decrease in plant life and an across the board decrease in temperatures everywhere on Earth.

This left dinosaurs, large reptilian animals that needed environments ripe with sources of food and heat to survive in a doubly bad situation. In turn the much smaller mammals whose bodies produced their own heat were better able to scrape out a living, and eventually mammals would work their way up the evolutionary ladder until humanity came into being.

That meteor, or storm of meteors, nothing more then a cosmic accident on par with the one that gave you your powers, might have set the evolution of intelligent life on earth back on a truly massive scale. Which brings us to this, my Dragon Man is a representation of what could have been if dinosaurs had been able to continue to evolve without that massive environmental change."

Grateful that he hadn't been called in just to examine the Professor's skill at sculpting Reed quickly rose to the challenge. "Fascinating. I take it the wings are, or at least would be more then vestigial?" "Indeed. I careful estimated exactly how much the creature would weigh, how much power its wings would require to let it fly and otherwise worked out every single aspect of the Dragon Man in my mind before I so much as purchased the physical components I built it from."

"Well then I must say I've seen, in fact built considerably less well thought out personal projects." One of the onlookers had apparently decided that the conversation was getting a little to academic for his tastes. "So Ultra Woman, have you been having any more problems with your powers recently?"

Susan rose to her feet and all but open snickered in the man's face. "That was completely last trimester, before I realized I was pregnant I was a bit thrown by my children deciding to show that they took after their mother even at only a month old. Ever since Reed gave me the good news my powers have been working just fine, in fact better then fine.

Would you folks mind giving me plenty of room so that I can show off a new trick I only recently figured out?" Reed started backing up, and sure enough everyone else followed suit. Once Susan evidently felt she had enough room, she began to stretch, flow and shift. First her pinkie fingers retracted into her palm, with her other digits starting to grow larger to make up the lost space. Her legs began to grow longer, and thicker, as at the same time why it was called the "tail bone" suddenly became much more obvious.

Her arms got a little shorter but larger over all, the shape of her head changing as well. Her shoulder blades began to alter themselves, it didn't take long for a pair of what at the very least could pass for wings to come into being. Over the course of about thirty seconds she'd gone from pregnant but still quite desirable woman (from Reed's frame of reference at least) to a more or less perfect replica of the Dragon Man, except that she'd kept her hair, mother to be belly, and her body was of course predominantly the blue color of her unstable molecule outfit instead of grey.

Susan flapped her wings, slapped her tail against the ground, and let loose with a roar that blew several people's hair and clothing slightly askew. At which point she let her new appendages go limp, and proceeded to speak in a perfectly normal tone of voice that even Reed would admit was slightly disconcerting coming from her current form. "Impressive isn't it? Of course if I tried to take one step forward I'd probably fall flat on my face, but after another month or three of practice, well who knows? All that said, I think I'm gonna pull myself back to normal right now since it's not like I came here to be the center of attention, that's what Reed is here for." The tail and wings retracted, her head and limbs returned to their normal proportion, pinkies slid back into being, and by the time she was done with the transformation, she'd even shifted her position around to the so that she easily slinked back into the chair she'd risen from.

Reed nodded in silent approval. There were really only two situations which made Susan Storm push herself to the very limit of what she was capable of, and subsequently find new and interesting ways to use her powers. The first was being motivated a mixture of fear for herself and her children, and anger directed at whoever was trying to put them in danger which occurred when she was fighting a supervillian. The second was considerably more benign in nature, the simple and all but universal human desire to make intercourse as enjoyable an experience for herself and her partner as possible.

She'd figured out this latest trick while she'd been under the influence of the later of those two, and personally Reed didn't see a single thing wrong with that. It was an effective style of training that they could engage in a lot more frequently then the former, and needless to say it was a lot safer. And that wasn't even getting into the joy that intercourse itself brought them!

--

Johnny breathed a sigh of relief. If he had to listen to one more minute of practically every single person he ran into wanting to all but throw themselves on the ground so the Great Benjamin Grimm didn't have to soil his boots by actually walking on dirt then he'd have gone haywire.

He didn't have the slightest clue where he was at the moment, but at least he was on his own. He looked around, and a saw that he was in some kind of lab, well he knew just what he was going to do, sit down, not touch anything, and try to slip into sleep mode until it was time to head back to the Baxter Building.

Except that no sooner had he sat down then he noticed a large object covered by a piece of white cloth, and stood back up. He wasn't going to actually touch anything belonging to the guy who owned this lab, he was just going to take a look, where was the harm in that?

He pulled off the piece of cloth and slowly looked the thing up and down. "Ouch, you must have fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every single branch on the way down." It was at that point that the grey skinned dragon like creature all of a sudden turned and faced him, its hot and humid breath washing over his body.

"I don't suppose it's too late to take back that ugly comment is it?" Johnny saw the beast's tail go back and quickly activated his powers. Just in time to, because practically the moment after he did it, the tail slammed into him. Johnny amused himself by counting how many walls he smashed through before he finally hit the ground. He was pretty sure it was three or four before he plowing a small rut through the ground leaving him laying on his back.

Which gave him a perfect view of the creature smashing through the roof as it took flight. Johnny just lay back and worked on clearing his head so that he could successfully communicate telepathically. /Reed, you might want to wrap up that lecture your giving a bit ahead schedule...\

--

"Which in turn leads me to the conclusion that..." Reed got no further in attempting to abridge his lecture without loosing anything of critical importance then that, before once again one of the Fantastic Four's public events descended into more or less utter chaos. A hardly insignificant portion of the ceiling was knocked in as what looked very much like a living version of Professor Gilbert's Dragon Man crashed through the ceiling.

Everything seemed to slow down, Reed's mind raced as he saw the falling bits of debris. He calculated the force with which those bits of debris were going to strike the people unlucky enough to have ended up in the "wrong" seats and what he could do about it. The results were extremely unpleasant. They were going to strike with more then enough force to break bones and skulls, and despite the fact that he was wearing his armor there wasn't a single thing he could do to stop the tragedy that was about to unfold before him.

Except that as it turned out there wasn't a single thing he needed to do to stop it. Never had Reed been quite so glad to have Susan attending one of his lectures as he was at this moment. She wrapped her legs around the foundation of the podium, stretched out her midsection and ended up wrapping her arms around some of the bars which supported the sound system that made sure everyone in the room had been able to hear his voice.

Which meant that instead of landing among the helpless crowd with deadly results, it landed on her body like rocks being tossed onto a trampoline. Her body fluctuated, but each and every piece of debris slowly bounced its way down its length and they landed harmlessly on the stage. Unfortunately that wasn't all that landed on the stage, the Dragon Man dropped onto it, and took one look at Reed before drawing in a deep breath and then letting loose with a torrent of flame aimed directly at him.

Ironically compared to the terror that had come with the Dragon Man's entrance, seeing an on rushing stream of orange red and yellow didn't even make the hairs on the back of his neck go up in apprehension. He simply made a pair of small gestures, one to activates his armor's shields and another to cause a pair of metal plates to slide across his eyes. Men who summoned up deamons from the netherworld did not do things by halves, and subsequently even though none of the team had possessed such powers Victor had designed his armor so that it'd be able to deal with elementally based attacks every bit as well as simple physical ones.

Sure enough, as the flames washed over him it felt more like slight change of temperature that came with suddenly stepping out of the shade and into a patch of sunlight rather then being roasted alive inside his own personal oven. As he felt the sense of on pouring heat fall from him, he made the correct motion to return his mask to normal, allowing him to get a clear view of just what was going on.

"Okay boys and girls, I realize that there are people who'd would be willing to pay money to stare at my body all day long, but I suggest you folks get out of here now and leave this to the two of us." Sure enough as she pulled herself back to normal the various guests left their seats and headed for the exits with all the haste they cold muster.

Meanwhile Reed was fairly sure both he and the Dragon Man were busy thinking exactly the same thoughts. "Okay... now what do I do?" If this creature was some kind of animated statue then one good concussion blast should be able to break it apart, but then statues as a rule weren't known for breathing fire and so even a full powered blast might only anger it further.

Before either of them could break the stalemate Susan did. After seeing that the all of the bystanders were safe, Susan began to wrap her body firmly around the Dragon Man's wings. The monster let out a loud roar of irritation, and tried to beat its wings, but Susan held on firmly keeping his wings pinned.

Since it couldn't take flight, the monster decided that it'd just have to find another way to maintain its mobility. It threw its body against the wall that had been to Reed's back when he had been giving his lecture. Looking through the large hole in the wall that it left behind Reed could see the Dragon Man racing along at a somewhat awkward four legged gate.

/Johnny, Ben, I'm bringing the Fantasticar around to the place where I was giving my lecture, we've got a some business that needs taking care of, something tells me you'll know it when you see it.\ Then Reed decided her might as well at least try and follow the Dragon Man on foot, it was a loosing prospect and he behind to start with, but he had to a least try.

--

The Dragon Man tried to flap its wings to speed it along its way, but Susan wasn't about to let go. Okay she was all on her own, but it wasn't like she had anywhere to go to if she did leave her current perch. Eventually the Dragon Man got tired of running and so it just stopped and panted heavily for a moment.

The two seemed to be right in the middle of nowhere or at least it looked that way, though all things considered something about the grey monster she was currently strapped to was probably doing quite a lot to make sure they were left alone.

The wings stopped flapping and Dragon Man began to twist its neck around try and grab her, but it was unable to it. Then it tried to reach its wings with its hands, and though it came close, she still evaded its grasp.

Still undaunted the beast sat down, and now assaulted her with its prehensile tail. It worked its way up over the creature's back to try and encircle its unwanted hitchhiker. Susan readjusted herself managing to stay right where she was, leaving the creature baffled for a few moments. Then the tail came up again and looped itself neatly around the section of Susan that was stretched between its wings. Which meant that no matter how much Susan thinned herself down or twisted unless she released her grip on one of those wings she was in fact caught.

The tail showing itself to be incredibly dexterous pulled forward as the Dragon Man crouched down slightly and lifted up his arms, apparently retractable claws sliding out to great Susan. As they slid into her she winced. The claws didn't really hurt, but she was deffinently going to give professor Gilbert a piece of mind next time they met.

The things were some kind of nightmarish mix of a fishing hook and a serrated blade. They were so good at gripping her that she had to focus intently on the task of working even a single one of the claws free. Which in turn meant that while see was doing that, the other nine claws were getting driven even further into yielding body.

Slowly but surly the Dragon Man's hands kept pulling at her, working Susan free from his wings and further into his culches, he felt stronger then any thing Susan had encountered in the past, be it her brother, be it one of the Moleman's monsters, Namor, or even Super Skrull.

Eventually her entire body found itself crushed between those two hands and Dragon Man let out a roar of triumph as he once again he was able to fully beat his wings. Susan could feel herself rising off the ground, and quickly noticed that the two of them seemed to be headed for some nearby mountains, she wished she could say she was surprised.

--

The Dragon Man finally landed outside a cave that seemed to be to its liking and retracted its claws allowing Susan to slip free. Knowing how high up they were, and how fast her captor could move, Susan decided that attempting to escape would not be in her best interest. So instead she'd just have to play the part of the damsel in distress for now and be ready to pitch in the moment the others arrived. She quickly stretched her body away from Dragon Man until she hit the back wall of the cave.

Then she looked forward at her captor and access exactly how much danger she was in. Those claws of its might look dangerous, but considering they'd been sticking into Susan the entire flight here, it was pretty clear that while she could be caught by them they couldn't actually harm her. The same went for its tail, arms and legs, while doubtlessly capable of easily crushing bones, the worst they could to do her was leave her flat as a pancake until she had time to reformed her body.

But then there was Dragon Man's ability breath fire, that was the one to watch out for. It would probably only take one good stream of red hot flame to turn Ultra Woman into nothing more then a blue blob smelling of burnt rubber. But apparently he needed to open his mouth and suck in air for a while before he could breath flame, so she'd be forewarned if he was about attack her in such a manner. Forewarned was doubtlessly forearmed, since all she needed to do was get underneath, behind, anywhere the thing couldn't turn its mouth towards would suit her just fine.

Dragon Man slowly began to approach Susan, its close to twelve foot tall frame blocking out most of the light that would have otherwise poured into he cave. "All right, you've got me, do whatever it is you plan on doing." Another advantage that she had over most kidnapped females besides her elastic body was that her outfit was made of unstable molecules, Dragon Man cold claw and scratch away it for hours without tearing it.

Granted its arms ended with appendages that did resemble human hands to a great degree regardless of retractable claws, they certainly looked deft enough to pull the outfit from her body, assuming it figured out how to. Well if it came to that, Susan could just curl her body into the smallest ball she could manage and that would probably stymie his intentions, assuming they ran along those lines.

The Dragon Man lowered its head, a long purple tongue protruding from its mouth that it ran all the way along Susan's body. Susan was dumbstruck for a few moments, and then started spitting and otherwise trying to get as much of its saliva off of her body as possible. "If you're thinking of eating me, you can save yourself some trouble and stop right now.

I may look all fat and juicy, but trust me, I'm as stringy as rubber. And if this is your idea of how to get me in the mood, girls don't like tongue until at least their third date." Susan had no idea if the monster understood her, she was many just saying the first thing that came to mind as a way of keeping herself from panicking, she hadn't previously considered the idea that the creature might want to devour her.

But she quickly managed to calm herself, there was no way he would succeed, she was sure it would be no great challenge to slip out through gaps between this creature's teeth if she wanted to. Not to mention those teeth could chew on her as long as they liked, they'd end up doing her no more lasting damage then its claws had, and if worst came to worst ,she could just stretch herself out till she was so large that she blocked the creatures throat.

That idea might even be in her best interest, since the thing would probably faint from lack of oxygen fairly soon after she obstructed its airway. While Susan was busy thinking, her captor licked her again, and then craned its neck slightly and began to rub the crest of is head up against her pregnant belly. "What are you doing now..." With the thing far enough away from the opening to let most of the light in, and thinking clearly Susan Storm literally saw the Dragon Man in a whole new light a that moment. "Oh, so that's how it is, all right..."

--

"Well so much for the three of us charging in to have another go at that overgrown lizard, Susy apparently managed to wrap things up all on her own." It was true, he'd expected to find Susan either subdued or engaged in a life or death struggle with the Dragon Man.

Instead the mighty beast was curled up on the floor of the cave, Susan's outstretched blue body wrapped over him like a cross between a tarp and a blanket. "Its the thought that counts really, just that you came means worlds to me. Though I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your voices down." She elongated her neck, in their direction while leaving the rest of her body wrapped around the slumbering Dragon Man. "Susan are you...?"

Reed didn't even get to finish the question before she answered. "Hurt in any way shape or form? No, I'm right as rain, and I think I've even figured out why the Dragon Man grabbed me. It all suddenly made sense when I realized its name was something of a misnomer."

Susan began to gently unwind herself and her brother scoffed as he got another look at the sleeping creature she had enfolded in her body. "It breaths fire and flies like a dragon, but it walks upright, why wouldn't dragon man be a good name for it?" Now that Reed didn't have to worry about trying to keep the Dragon Man from causing massive property damage if not loss of life, he recognized the answer at once. "Because it, or should I say she, is female."

Ben and Johnny both looked at him in surprise and Reed only shrugged. "What? If you take a moment to look there's a clear lack of any sort of male genitalia present about its lower body when if true to scale they should be quite massive and quite obvious straining against its current garments. Also if you carefully examine that area of its body over there, you can clearly start to make out..." Ben's wings flapped in irritation. "You know what professor, why don't we skip the anatomy lecture and get to the point where it felt it needed to have a slumber party with the girl who is supposedly soon going to be your wife as the sleeping bag?"

Reed was already formulating theories but he let Susan take the first shot at voicing a real explanation. "I don't have a clue about how this thing came to life, or how much it remembers of being a statue. But not long before it came to life a professor was showing it to me and Reed, more for Reed's benefit then mine of course. One of the onlookers asked me to demonstrate my powers and I did so by stretching myself into a model of the creature, though I did keeping my pregnant belly, even making it a little bigger to fit to scale.

I'm guessing that the Dragon Man, or Dragon Woman if you want to be more accurate, probably picked up some kind of feeling about that event, and since for the first time it was seeing another creature like it, even if it had blue skin instead of grey. So mix that in with my pregnant belly, the fact that its clearly warm blooded, and I guess maybe it sort of imprinted on me." "Imprinted?"

Reed was as quick to answer as Johnny was to question. "When most species of birds hatch they automatically imprint upon the first thing resembling an adult bird they see, assuming that it's their mother and will look after them. Careful manipulation of that impulse is necessary to properly raise birds in captivity, but that's beside the point.

What matters here is that if the Dragon Woman imprinted on Susan then when it came alive it followed the first natural impulse that almost every highly developed creature has, to seek out its mother for sustenance and protection. That's why it grabbed Susan and took off, it wanted to make sure we couldn't separate the two of them." Ben's eyes got a little bit wider comprehension dawned. "Your saying that oversized geko thinks that Susy Q gave birth to it?" Johnny snickered. "Wow, well if you ever think that carrying six of Reed's kids is making you a walking behemoth sis, just imagine what you'd look like carrying that around inside you for nine months!"

Susan scowled at her younger brother. "Johnny this is no time for jokes." Johnny revered from his meal to his human skin complacently leaning against one wall of the cave. "I don't see why it isn't. Even if this girl wakes back up and goes back to dealing with what must be one hell of a bad case of PMS, my sister just has to look her right in the eyes and not say a word. She'll fold up her wings and go sit in a corner to think about what she did wrong, it certainly worked on me enough times.."

Susan sighed empathically. "Yes, I can probably keep her under my control, but only for the most part, she's got even less impulse control then you do Johnny, one person throws a rock at her, and she might go right back to breathing fire every which way until I can get her to calm down and listen to me. So while she might not present much of a threat to us, we still have to worry about the danger she might present to others."

Reed attempted to scratching his chin but stopped as soon as he realized he was only rubbing his gauntleted fists up against his facemask. "Well then, I suppose the only thing to do is to get her to some place that we can be sure no one will throw that rock. The Baxter Building would be the best place I can think of at the moment, Ben why don't you go back to the Fantasticar and bring it around to the mouth of the cave? Susan do you think you'll be able to convince Dragon Woman to follow the Fantasticar, or at least your instructions?"

Susan looked back at the huge sleeping figure and then nodded slowly. "I'm not sure if she'd grasp following the Fantasticar, but as long as I'm on her shoulders whispering directions I think it should work out well enough. I did manage to get her to curl up and go to sleep before you three arrived after all." Reed began to slowly inspect his gauntlets, a motion the other's had come to associate with him going through the mental checklist of all his weapons.

"I better stick with you on her back just to be safe. That way if something goes wrong, I believe I've got something that at close range should be able to temporarily subdue her without causing permanent damage. Which turn means I guess you'll need to take care of piloting the Fantasticar the whole way back Ben." Johnny suddenly stood up straight. "No fair, Ben can already fly on his own, why can't I pilot the Fantasticar?"

Thankfully Ben was perfectly willing to answer that question himself. "Because I've got a couple years worth of experience at keeping birds up in the air and setting them down without breaking them in the process. Why don't you make like a calculator and add up all the time you've spent in the cockpit and tell us how much it is?" Johnny fixed his glance dourly on the ground as Ben took off wings flapping to retrieve the Fantasticar from where they'd parked on he closest flat part of the mountain to this cliff they could find.

Susan meanwhile gently began to stroke the Dragon Woman under her chin causing her to emit a strange trilling noise that Reed assumed was the creatures natural response to pleasurable stimulation. Then its large eyes opened up and Susan continuned to stroking that grey chin while she spoke. "Nap time is over for right now girl, we need to fly some place that'll be even safer and warmer then here and we won't be bothered by anyone. You'd like that wouldn't you?" The creature nodded her large head giving a mighty roar of ascent that seemed to shake he cave ever so slightly.

"Good, then here's how to do it, you start flying straight, and I'll grab one your wings whenever I want you to turn. Same wing as the direction I want you to turn in. Think you can handle that?" The Dragon Woman nodded and let lose with another roar of ascent, this one somewhat more subdued. Then her eyes came to rest on Reed and Johnny evidently remembering how they'd reacted to it last time they met. For a creature of her size the Dragon Woman moved surprisingly quickly, shifting her great bulk about between them and its 'mother', wrapping its tail protectively about Susan.

Luckily Susan had no trouble slipping out of that grip and interposed itself between the three. "No, no, no, bad! Reed and Johnny are friends, they want to look after me, the same way you do." The Dragon Woman let lose with an inquisitive whine, and Susan calmly patted her belly with both hands. "You like this don't you?" The creature nodded, and began to once again rub the ridge of her head softly against Susan's body.

When she was finish with that, Susan walked over to Reed placing a hand on his shoulders. "Well he's the one who did this to me, if you like me and you like this, then you'll just have to learn to like him. As for my brother, you don't have to like him but you at least have to tolerate him, the exact same way I do."

The Dragon Woman's wings fluttered slightly, lowering her head to the ground and then made some kind of "chuff" noise in Reed's general direction, which hopefully was meant to indicate approval. Johnny just watched the entire proceeding and then sighed deeply. "That's my niece apparently. So Reed, for the record how comfortable are you with the idea of marrying into the Storm family?" Reed just stayed silent behind his mask.

--

"I'm sorry about this Susan." There were of course no straps, no saddles, and no reigns when it came to ridding the Dragon Woman. Luckily Susan had quickly stretched out her body in a loop around the her mount's chest, another quick loop around Reed's to make sure he stayed in place, wrapped her legs in knots around Dragon Woman's legs just to be doubly sure, then finally stretched out one arm to take hold of each wing so that she could steer.

It left Reed sitting behind her, except for the section of her body was that was wrapped firmly around his own midsection. Susan laughed merrily the wind whipped past them, they were sitting almost directly behind Dragon Woman's head, so most of it actually went around rather then into them. "For what? Having one of your colleagues creations suddenly come to life? Nothing you could have done about it. Now, if you had invented some kind of crazy statue come to life gun and shot this thing with it just to proved it worked, then I might be somewhat upset."

Reed looked down, seeing with his mind's eye what his regular ones couldn't. "No, I mean it wasn't just because I wanted to pay back he institute that educated me that I decided to give a lecture here." Since part of Susan's body was wrapped around his, he could feel her tense slightly. "Then why else did you want to come here, for Ben's sake?"

Reed shook his head even though he was fairly sure there was no way Susan could see him dong it. "No, I did it because, down there on the campus, there's a tree that was struck by a bolt of lighting and split halfway up the length of its trunk, but not killed by it. This caused it to grow diagonally upwards, until he weight of those two growths became more then the tree itself could keep properly upright, so they bent towards each other.

Which in effect makes the two halves of the tree look like a heart, I'm sorry if I'm not doing a very good job describing it. Anyway, it's called the Sweetheart Tree, and its said that if a couple holds hand and kiss in front of it then they'd be married within a year. And so, after I finished my lecture, I was going to ask you to hold my hand and kiss me in front of it, then I was going to offer you the engagement ring that my grandmother wore, and ask you to marry me.

Because I thought it'd be perfect, that's the reason I seemed a little distracted today, and the reason I'm sorry." Susan twisted her neck around so that she could look Reed in the eye, her own were staring to tear up and Reed suspected it had nothing to do with the altitude or the speed. "That's sweet. You do sill have the ring on you, right?" Reed nodded sadly. "Of course I do, but I'm not sure how deftly I'd be able to handle it with my gauntlets on, and I don't want to take them off in conditions like these, besides..."

Susan cut him off firmly. "Don't worry about it, give me a moment to free up the necessary finger for the matters... aww hell I think my girl has got the idea of following the lights of the Fanasticar's engines pretty down pat, I'll free up the entire hand." Susan retracted her right hand, bit deeply into it (to the extent that she probably would have found the experience quite unpleasant without her powers) yanking off her glove which she quickly wrapped right arm around to keep in place.

Then the section of her that was looped around Reed loosened slightly so that instead of sitting right next to one another there were about two feet between them. Reed found the loosened grip slightly upsetting, but managed to calm his stomach and his nerves with the logical fact that even if he fell and Susan didn't grab him, he still had his shields and rockets. "You really want to do it like this?"

Susan nodded her head firmly. "Perfect is different for everyone Reed. Yes my hair is a windblown mess that happens to still be slightly drenched in dragon saliva, yes I'm only four months pregnant and look way further along. Yes you still have a face that looks like it was assembled by a committee. Yes there are a million reason why now isn't the right time, but there are also a billion reasons why it is, and that is what makes it perfect.

Besides. if nothing else, hey I'm ridding a dragon! If that doesn't say fairytale romance to you, I don't know what does." Reed slowly pressed a section of his gauntlet and pulled out the golden ring with the diamond still glistening on top of it. "All right then. Susan Storm, will you marry me?" Susan's uncovered right ring finger extended across the distance between them, driving itself right through the ring. Then as she retracted it she also pulled Reed in close.

"Of course I will Reed Richards! I'd kiss you right about now, but like you suggested taking off any part of your armor right now is a bad idea. That, and I'm sure if I kissed you right after you proposed, even mouth to metal, one of my legs would end up wanting pop romantically. Which if they did right now, would insure that we'd have to continue this conversation hanging upside down wrapped around our rides belly instead of seated on her back.

So we'll have to let the formalities wait for a bit I guess." Reed nodded along with each word, still somewhat dumbstruck, he'd known that Susan would say yes (especially after she asked him to do it up here) but there was a big difference between the knowledge he'd had in his mind, and the knowledge that had only now finally managed to work its way down to his guts. "Considering how long we've both been waiting for this moment I think we can do a little longer pretty easily."

--

The roof of the Baxter Building opened and the Fantasticar began to descend towards the hanger, with Dragon Woman not far behind. When she finally landed Reed and Susan quickly dismounted, as did Ben and Johnny from there more technological mode of transportation. "Okay, so now that we've got her here, where exactly are we gonna keep her?"

Susan looked around the hanger and came up with an answer for Ben's question almost at once. "Why not in here? That way we won' have to worry about getting her through doorways designed for people who are were at most seven feet tall." Her brother had somewhat more material concerns on hand however. "How about because we also keep the Fantasticar in here? There's no way I'm letting her break it before I get a chance to!"

Reed luckily was on his now official fiancee's side. "The Fantasticar's got an 'impressive' to say the least, antitheft and self-defence system. While leaving it in here with Dragon Woman would be a bad idea, we can park it on he roof without needing to worry too much. And Susan's original point is a good one, to get her anywhere else we'd need to knock down a couple walls, or at least seriously widen a couple doors."

The other two realized it would be pointless to argue any further, and only then did Johnny notice the change in his sister's appearance. "Why did you take your right glove off sis?" Susan held up her right hand front and center so that the other two could get a nice long look at her ring. "Take a guess..." They didn't even need that. Ben just grabbed the two and pulled them into the tightest hug he could manage. "Your engaged! Congratulations!"

Susan twisted and pulled her body out of Ben's grip and smiled. "Thanks Ben, it means a lot coming from you, especially considering..." Ben waved her words off before she could finish the sentence. "Please, even my current girlfriend could see that you two were made for each other, and her sight isn't exactly 20/20 as you might remember. So don't feel bad on my account."

Johnny for his part just gave Reed a friendly punch on arm. "Congrats, but one metal man to another, you better treat her right or I'll... I'm not quite sure what I'll do, but I guarantee you won't like it." Considering that those words came about as seriously as Susan had ever heard her brother say anything, even if the seemed to be equal parts praise and threat Reed should doubtlessly feel honored by them.

--

Susan laid back in her, their, it was their bed now there was no doubt of that, all her attention focused on the ring currently residing on her right hand. "What exactly am I going to do with you?" "You know most women wear them. If you want to get the ring resized so that it'll fit over your glove I can take care of it for you." Susan her attention from the gem on her right hand to the man who had given it to her. "Well I'm just sort of worried about what might happen if I'm not careful, for example..."

She stretched her right hand to a rather minuscule degree and the ring fell from her finger to land on the bed. Reed (who was now only dressed in unstable molecule uniform instead of armor) climbed into bed and quickly retrieved the ring, taking a moment to inspect it himself. "You know you raise a good point, though I suppose since its the thought that counts I could simply take the diamonds and get it attached to a ring made out of unstable molecules."

Susan shook her head, her eyes once again returning to the small bauble. "No. Don't waste your time doing that." Reed's glance shifted between the woman he loved and her ring. "Why shouldn't I do that?" She tapped a finger quite firmly on the diamond itself. "Because of this thing. I mean lets be honest with each other, there are going to be times when I'll need to squeeze myself through spaces that are smaller then this gem itself.

So one way or another, I'd probably end up leaving it behind in some supervillian lair regardless of what the ring itself is made out of. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy this, I mean you've got a compartment for it in your armor right? So how about I'll just hold onto it, right the way it is, and when I feel like I'm going to need to stretch my hand I'll give it to you for safe keeping?"

"Sounds like the best one that either of us is going to come up with any time soon.." He handed the ring back to her, and she slipped it back onto the finger which it had come from. So they followed up on her plan, and sure enough regardless of everything else that happened that night, the ring was still there in the morning right where she had left it.

--

Early the next morning Reed was surprised to find Susan practically skipping despite both her pregnant belly, and the large wheeled tank of water with a hose attached and a few white towels laid out on top of it that she was pushing along. "Where are you going with that if you don't mind me asking?" Susan shook her head firmly.

"Not at all, I decided that my 'daughter' could use a nice shower and rub down to get rid of any dirt she picked up yesterday and give her scales that extra special sparkle." As Susan kept moving Reed easily matched her pace. "You realize...?" Reed had no clue how he was going to end that sentence, in fact as it turned out even Susan had a better idea then he did.

"Yeah I know. It is probably a crazy pregnancy hormone thing, but I've decided that I don't care about it. Besides, if nothing else it'll be excellent practice." Susan's incredibly good mood evidently had an effect on him as well, because Reed found himself lapsing into sarcasm to make his point. "For when you need to hose down our children in order to get them clean?"

Susan stopped for a moment and then shrugged, blithely resuming her pace. "It's practice figuring out to deal with the fact that I've got to plan my schedule around the needs of others rather then my own, though superheroing is pretty good practice for that as well. I think what matters the most is that there's a creature out there in the world who depends on me to take care of it, that's the essence of motherhood if you ask me.

Of course in this case the creature is a dragon human hybrid that could probably tear through a tank with ease, but I'm not going to let that get to me. The same way I'm not going to let the fact that comparing our sizes I look more or less like a baby next to her get to me. Or the fact that I'll probably need a seperate garbage bag for each pile of her droppings I carry off get to me."

In other situations those words could have sounded like thinly veiled resentment, but Susan sounded so very, very, earnest that Reed couldn't help but believe her. "You really are going to make a great mother." Susan nodded her head so energetically that Reed was sightly surprised that her neck didn't stretch itself out making her head bounce back and forth a few times like a bobblehead doll.

"Yeah I know, like I said it might just be the pregnancy hormones, but for some reason knowing that is almost as good as sex. Not that I'm demeaning you or sex, I'm just saying it's a really good feeling." Reed considered all the inventions he could be working on, then considered the alternative. "Mind if I join you?"

Susan just staired at him for a few moments as if wondering if the man who she had agreed to marry and was widely considered one of the most brilliant persons on the face of the Earth was qualified enough to help her scrub down the newest resident of the Baxter Building. Eventually she decided that he was, motioning casually in the general direction of the hanger. "You keep taking this stuff towards the hanger, I'll go grab a few more towels."

--

"Hey girl, do you know what time it is?" The Dragon Woman stirred herself awake, shaking of the sky blue (the same color as their unstable molecule uniforms) blankets that she had been provided with looking eagerly at Susan. It let out an indistinct sound, granted Susan was actually guessing about all the sounds that the creature created, she just felt more confident about some then others.

But then for thousands of years mothers had been talking to their children even when they had no hope of getting any kind of intelligible response back, so Susan didn't let it stop her now. "That's right, it's bath time! And after that I'll get you a nice big haunch of venison for breakfast, doesn't that sound nice?"

For a response the Dragon Woman drew nearer, making that "chuffing" sound at Reed again before rubbing the crest of its head against Susan's belly which evidently going to be her official way of greeting her protector and provider. "Reed why don't we start with you handling the hose and then I'll wipe her dry? She permitted you to ride with me on her back yesterday, but I'd want to make sure she's in a good mood before you make physical contact again."

Reed nodded and got to work implementing Susan's plan, at first the Dragon Woman cried out loudly in distress and surprise as the stream of water hit it, and it began to advance menacingly on Reed. It also opened up its mouth, puffing up its cheeks in evident preparation to breath fire. Susan stepped in front of Reed (stretching her body so as not to disrupt the stream of water) and look Dragon Woman right in the eye regardless of the difference in their normal heights, making the message quite clear, she couldn't burn one without hitting the other as well. "Don't..."

The sound of a deeply inhaled breath soon turned into a racking cough with only a few tendrils of smoke rose from Dragon Woman's mouth and nostrils. Then she submitted herself the indignity of standing there quietly enduring the sensation of having itself sprayed down before it eventually began to trill slightly. "That's the spirit, now turn around would you?"

Dragon Woman turned around consenting to have its wings ,back, and tail washed down the same way its front had been. Once that task was completed, Susan grabbed one of the white fluffy towels and calmly waddled her way over. "That's right, you're a good girl, now just sit or stand still and let mommy get you nice and dry..."

Susan stretched up and started working from Dragon Woman's head, figuring that since water dripped downwards, if she started at the bottom she'd need to do half of her work all over again by the time she was supposedly finished. More trills of delight rang in Susan's ears as she slowly worked her way down from the top of the head to the ears, face and chin humming to herself as she worked.

"I really need a name for you..." Reed who was of course standing only a couple feet away easily caught her words. "It was my understanding she already had a name." Susan reached out for a new dry towel and snagged it while entering into the conversation with surprising ease. "Weather its 'Dragon Man' or 'Dragon Woman' it still sounds more a species' name then a person's. It'd be like having a cat named it Shorthair or Siamese."

Reed remained silent as Susan with equally wordless focus twisted about and began to dry off her charge's pair of large wings. It was only as she was finishing the process that Reed spoke up again. "Gale?" Susan rotated her body again so that she could look at him. "Pardon?" Reed adjusted his gaze so that it was not on her, but on the pair of large wings she was working on. "I was just imaging the amount of force flapping those wings must be able to generate if it keeps her aloft.

If someone was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of it they'd have a quite unpleasant experience, and that's when it hit me, Gale." Susan pondered the name for a few moments herself before putting the question to the person who's opinion on the issue really mattered. "What do you think? One roar for no, two roars for yes." The response was one great roar, quickly followed up by another even mightier one that seemed to make the entire room shake.

"Well I think its safe to say that Gale likes the idea. Now then, will you be a good girl for mommy and let daddy Reed help her by washing as much of you as he can reach?" The newly christened "Gale" bobbed her head up and down in a decent attempt at a nod. Susan stretched out her arms and grabbed a new pair of towels, one which she kept and one which she passed to Reed. "You heard our daughter, ready to get to work?"

Reed nodded, at least a lifetime of looking after delicate machinery had given him plenty of practice when it came to wiping things down as opposed to certain other tasks a father might be called upon to handle. "You know, I thought I wouldn't have to worry about things like this for at least another six months or so." Susan's shoulders shrugged as her arms got back to work. "And four months ago, I thought I was an infertile rubbery amoeba, life isn't an easy race to run, either keep up or just lay down and stay that way."


	9. Chapter 9

AN: Before I get started, another thank you for marvelousmariaah for her review, and I'd love to here what some of my other readers think!

Swelling with love chapter nine: Felicitations, in which Susan Richards has the best and worst day of her life.

"Ready girl?" Susan Storm had been a lot of things over the last few months: superheroine, lover, homemaker to name three at random, and of course she looked forward to being a few more things fairly soon, bride, wife, and mother of six to name another three at random.

Then there was what she happened to be right now, and the many ways she could look at the question. So for example if you wanted to go by the very simplest answer, she was a sphere of blue flesh that was about the size of a basket ball. She had also ended up being a mother, or at least something like it, much sooner then she'd expected to be, even after finding herself pregnant with six children even before getting married had made her move forward her estimations once already.

Her "daughter" Gale the Dragon Woman was originally a statue of an evolutionary could have been that somehow come to life through means even her brilliant fiancee Reed Richards was at a lost to explain. But she had, and she'd ended up imprinting on Susan, who for her part had to admit there was a certain charm to the situation.

Probably because of the absurdity of it, there had been lots and lots of absurdity in her life recently, so growing to like it was probably some sort of defence mechanism. Besides the entire giant monster bonding with a beautiful woman seemed to be one of those stories that you heard so many times that it just had to have come true in real life at one point or another, even if Susan was much more capable of looking after herself (even while pregnant) than Fey Ray.

Gale let loose with a minor chirp of acknowledgment and if Susan had a head to nod in her current situation that's just what she would have done. "Okay then, fetch!" Gale had hands that even if they only had four digits, were still human enough to grasp and hurl Susan's current form which she did with considerable strength.

The room which belonged to the Fantastic Four's newest guest had originally been a hanger for the Fantasticar and their other vehicles. Which meant that it was quite spacious, and thus gave the two plenty of room to play with. Susan bounced across the floor and a moment later, Gale broke into a four legged run, flapping her wings as she chased after Susan's bouncing body.

But not for nothing had Susan been a superheroine for the last ten months of her life. It might not have sounded like much, but with each passing week (if not each passing day) she'd been perfecting how to use her powers, and seen marked improvements. Bounce faster, stretch farther, make herself thinner (what woman didn't want to be able to perfect her ability to do that?), be able to lift more with her elastic limbs, the whole 'we can rebuild her better faster stronger" spiel.

The long and short of which was that she was able to keep once bounce ahead of Gale up until the point that she reached the wall. At which point she decided to simply aim her bounce so that she should be able to hit the wall and ricoche right over Gale's head. That was her plan at least, but Gale had her own plans.

She slammed her wings together at just the right moment to sandwich Susan between them. Susan slid lazily out of that makeshift prison resuming her human shape and flowing right into Gale's waiting hands, with her claws retracted this time around unlike when they'd originally met.

"Good girl, you got me." Gale managed to give what amounted to a fairly good smile despite how many fangs there were in her mouth. Then she opened her mouth and proceeded to run her large tongue along Susan's body from her feet up to her hair like an over affectionate (not to mention oversized) puppy. "Hey watch the hair, I just finished getting it the way I wanted."

Gale gave a sort of pathetic whine in apology. In response, Susan oozed out of those larger hands, reforming herself so that she stood before Gale pregnant belly and all for a moment before she started extending her neck so that their eyes were level. "Hey, hey, hey, you know I'm just joking with you right? Now come on, why don't we play another round?" The question asked, Susan quickly curled her entire body into a sphere again, and bounced into Gale's waiting hands.

--

Susan grabbed a towel with an elongated arm, pulled it back to her body, used it to give her saliva soaked hair a quick wipe down, gave it an equally quick shake, and she didn't need a mirror to see the results. When your hair was elastic, you could always style it exactly the way you wanted every single time. That wasn't exactly the kind of thing that would help you save the world, but it was a connivent little side perk.

"You know, for twelve foot tall dragon, Gale really has a way of growing on a girl." Reed spun his chair around and said some words in a much more clam tone of voice then Susan cared to hear them. "You know you can't keep her, right?" Susan placed her hands on her hips and glowered at him. "Why not? I mean I know she's not exactly a lost puppy we found on our doorstep, but by the same token I'm not some nieve little girl. I know it's got to be expensive to take care of her, but it isn't that expensive, is it?"

Reed got up out of his chair, and walked over to one of countless levers (not to mention the switches, and buttons) that all looked more or less exactly the same and happened to populate his lab. He pulled it, and a section of the wall moved to the side and a bed slid out. He made his way over to the bed and motioned for Susan to join her, which she consented to, since apparently it was going to be a long, or at least longish conversation. "Susan it's not the material cost that I'm worried about, the Fantastic Four is still solidly in the black even though feeding Gale requires several dozen pounds of meet a day. It's the more time requirement.

At the moment it might seem like a round peg into a round hole situation, since it gives you something to do while I'm busy in the lab, but a few months down the line... Do you think you think we'll be able to find time to look after her and our children?" There was a very long pause while Susan worked over that largely metaphorical question before she finally bit the bullet and admitted what so many people had done so many times, Reed Richards was right.

"Damn, it's no fair. I know it's only been two weeks, but I already feel like she's a member of the family. Hell she's been more obedient on average then Johnny is. I don't suppose we can keep Gale if I'm willing to give him up?" The two shared looks, and then Susan sighed. "I'm guessing that's a 'no', okay you're right, I probably won't have time for her, but what should we do with her? We can't exactly leave her in a box on some street corner, or take her to the pound."

Susan saw that look in Reed's eyes and he knew what the gist of his next sentence would be, regardless of what exactly what form it took. "Well, I wouldn't have brought it your attention if I hadn't already formulated at least a preliminary plan on how to deal with the problem us giving her up presents. Basically I've spent a fair amount of time over the course of the last week touching base with various people who I thought might be able to look after her.

The end result of which was that I more or less got lucky. It turns out that a college friend of mine named Nicholas, though of course even back then he preferred 'Nick', Fury is now in charge of a governmental agency that may be able to help us with this problem. It's called SHIELD which stands for Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage, Logistic Directorate, and all things considered I'm surprised that we haven't already been tripping over their toes since apparently they exist deal with the kind of crime that your average police officer, or even intelligence agent would be in over their head if they went up against.

Anyway, as it turns out, they apparently have a location known as the 'The Farm' which serves as a safe haven for various animals that were created by supervillians that while not themselves malicious, couldn't be released into the wild without throwing a serious monkey wrench into the environment. Which seems to more or less fit Gale to a 'T' all things considered.

It also was also was quite obviously the best way of dealing with this particular conundrum." Susan had to admit that it did sound rather ideal. "Okay that could work, but just one thing..." Reed leaned forward intently. "What?" "Before I could even think about sending Gale off, I want her to know that I am unequivocally the happiest woman on the face of the planet.

That way she won't have to worry about how I'm doing without her. You know what I'm talking about, right?" "Our wedding?" Susan didn't remember stretching herself, and yet somehow she'd ended up with her torso and neck wrapped around Reed's. "Yeah. By the way, do you think that we could, bring her to the wedding?" Reed gave her exactly the kind of answer she was expecting.

"So you're suggesting that in addition to the press, other superheroes, and what not, we should bring along have a fire breathing dragon at our wedding? You do realize that when you make requests like that, I wonder if wouldn't have be a more efficient use of our time to just burn the place down ourselves and call it a day?" Susan didn't consider herself Reed's equal when it came to words, but she had picked up a few of his tricks. "I notice that when you say that, you aren't actually telling me we can't do it."

Reed nodded. "It'd certainly be keeping with the theme of the event, which seems to be 'look how many oddities we can manage to fit into one place', personally if it wasn't for my face I'm sure I'd feel like my own normality would make me effectively abnormal." Susan sighed, snickered, and then laughed.

"Yeah we might as well make some kind of artificial looking glass or rabbit hole to have our guests enter through." "Well if you insist on it..." Susan pressed a finger to Reed's lips. "That, I was kidding about. So how quickly do you think we can manage to get all this together?" Susan felt Reed leaning backwards slightly and adjusted her posture and body to support his.

"Well, barring any supervillian attacks a week more or less. Nick Fury himself is going to be paying us a visit tomorrow to inspect Gale and make sure that SHIELD sends the correct type of equipment to transport her when the time comes, we've already got the unstable molecule bridal gown you wanted, so it'll just be a matter of sending out invitations. Of course doing it on such short notice seems rather unprofessional."

Susan shrugged with her entire body. "Well if anyone asks why, we can always tell them that a we felt it wouldn't have been fair to make the press stew in the juices for any longer then a week. For example if we'd given them a month to prepare then fist fights might have started breaking out between various new crews as they jockeyed for the exact right spot to set up their cameras.

You've got time to squeeze in a visit to with that team of plastic surgeons you've been assembling right?" As she spoke, she ran a hand along that fake face that while essentially human, was just a little too bland upon third or fourth glance being completely lacking in any of the normal human imperfections that you would normally find in a face. "I'm planning to visit them the day before, though I plan to continue wearing this face directly after the surgery.

That way, when we're at the alter I can lift up your veil with one hand, and take off my mask with the other, that way we'll both get a good view of each other's faces at the same time." Susan had to admit that was a romantic idea, and coming from Reed Richards it was an INCREDIBLY romantic idea.

"That' sounds lovely." Susan couldn't help but notice that Reed was doing it again, he wasn't going limp in her grasp, he was actively leaning backwards. It was like he was trying to fall backwards onto the bed, and drag her down on top of him. Which would mean... "Reed are you..."

He leaned forward this time, and gingerly licked one of the curls of her hair. "Trying to start something besides a conversation? I spend a lot of time in my lab, you spend a lot of time with Gale, so when we get back together you're surprised that sparks fly?" In all fairness she wasn't, it was just that he hadn't made the first move in a while, not mention how he'd done it. "Okay, but licking my hair it works better for me as a bit of giant dragon to human mother bonding then husband to wife foreplay. If you wanted to, all you had to do was ask." "Can we talk for a while for?"

Susan nodded kindly running a hand through the strand of hair that Reed had licked. "Sure, let me guess, you're going to try and literally charm he pants off me, or at least get them off without needing to use your hands?" Granted Reed had already managed that particular feat not so long ago, telekinesis required more of his concentration then he could muster during the main event unlike her elasticity, but it still could make for a very interesting opening act.

"You know you're not the only one who has worries about our children's futures." Susan's eyes went wide in surprise. "What are you worried about? I thought we agreed that last month that you'd more or less figured out every single aspect of what we'd need to look after them."

Susan unwarped herself from around Reed and laid down on her side. He did the same, his right hand, tracing lazy circles around her belly. "I said I'd figured out everything about how to look after them, not every detail of how to raise them. And that's what I'm worried about.

I mean I've always thought of you as one of the most maternal women I've ever the met, and your time with Gale has only led further evidence to the validity of that theory, but what kind of father do you think I'll be? There are so many different projects that even now only exists as ideas in my mind, and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to keep myself from bringing them to fruition.

Victor's armor alone, not even upgrading but just working on replicating what he made, that could keep me busy for months from dusk to dawn, and if I'm spending all my time in the lab, I won't have any time for the most important people in my life." Susan chuckled, smiled broadly, and then opened her mouth letting her tongue grow long enough that she could use it to lick some of Reed's black hairs before she returned it to its normal length.

"You know, its so cute when you're all self conscious. Listen Reed, after you got out of college and before we started dating, what did your daily schedule consist of?" Reed gingerly felt the hairs that his fiancee's saliva had dampened, apparently he hadn't expected her to give him tit for tat.

"Wake up, go to work, go to sleep, attend basic bodily needs between the three, and repeat the process. The sad thing I wasn't even accomplishing all that much because I was busy working on too many things at he same time. Then eventually Ben dropped in and told me that he'd seen albinos who had better skin tone then I did, said that I could either leave with him, or leave with him after leaving imprints of my fingers in whatever part of the lab I cared try and hold onto.

Which was how I ran into you again, and considering the last time I'd seen you you'd been living with your Aunt, so you'd..." "Become legal to hit and grown a pair of breasts, hips, and ass worthy of hitting. Well more hips and ass at least, the breasts are still a work in progress." Reed used his free hand to gently feel out his fiancee's bosom. "Personally I don't think there's anything 'in development' about that particular portion of your anatomy, I like them just fine the way they are." Susan leaned forward slightly pressing her belly and breasts up against Reed's body.

"Really? Well I've got some bad news on that front. You're the one who's suppose to know everything about pregnancy, but even I know that with me still in the second trimester, my rack is only gonna get for the next few months. That's what these things are for after all. My body knows I've got so many buns in my oven that there are bakeries who wonder if they could make use of my services, and subsequently by the time my body is done getting ready for them I'll probably be getting calls from dairy farms that wonder if could work for them part time. Suffice to say, by the time I'm eight and a half months along, you'll be able to use my belly for a water bed, and a my breasts for pillows."

Reed took a moment to size up Susan's endowments with his eyes before commenting in a tone utterly devoid of emotion. "Well I can already use them for that if I wanted to." Susan tilted her neck down and sighed emphatically. "Okay fair enough, but like I said, they'll get bigger. They're probably going to stay bigger to, though I hear directly nursing can help with that, but one way or another they typically end up being larger by the time the whole process is over and done with.

But I suppose you'll just have to live with the fact that your wife has a remarkably ample matronly bosom. Which is a shame because all I ever hear from Johnny is how much the compact look is in this season, and here I am with my stuck with the family sized model." The two of them shared a laugh, conventional wisdom said that there were certain parts of the male and female anatomy that couldn't possibly be 'too large' and a woman's breasts happened to be one of them.

Unsurpringly Reed stopped laughing first. "Like I was saying Susan, it was because of seeing you again, wanting to impress you that I realized I'd have to seriously focus on one task at a time if I wanted to get anything impressive done. So first I banged about half a dozen patents that I could count on to take care of my financial needs, and after that for about a week I just sat around wondering what I could make that would impress you.

At first I just worked on narrowing down a list of what I'd need the idea to be like regardless of its exact nature: it should be something that we could share, something that wouldn't just make me rich and respected in academic circles, but the kind of person that even someone like Ben would read and hear about.

In the end, it was nothing more then blind luck, I was fed up with thinking of and rejecting so many ideas, so I went for a walk outside to clear my head. There was a full moon that night, a glistening silver orb that hung like a giant pearl in the middle of an ocean of black.

That was when it hit me, I'm not sure wear I'd heard it, weather it was actual valid testimony, or just some line from a movie or book, but somewhere out of somewhere the phrase 'there is no more beautiful sight then being able to see the entire world at once' echoed through my head. Because if something as completely void of life as the moon could seem beautiful when seen from earth, what would a blue orb as full of life as the Earth look like if someone could somehow manage to see it all at once?"

Susan couldn't help it, she snickered and placed her hands upon her belly. "Funny you should mention blue orbs filled with life... yeah I know, poor joke, but I couldn't help myself, you can keep going." Keep going was just what Reed did. "Well I think you know how the story turned out from there.

I was determined to become famous by being the man behind the first civilian flight to the moon. I got Ben to fly it, and of course wanted you to come along from the start so that you could see the entire Earth at once." There long pause as Susan closed her eyes, and then slowly opened them. "I did see it, and it was beautiful. Of course that viewing port that I saw it through was probably how the cosmic rays that made it through our shields got inside the ship itself and were able to play havoc with our DNA, which I suppose makes that window a double win depending on how you keep score."

The two just laid there for almost a minute straight before Reed spoke up. "And?" Susan twisted her neck to a conventionally impossible degree. "And what?" "Well you're the one who started this particular conversation on the subject of how I shouldn't be worried about my parental skills."

Susan twisted her head even further, shook it slightly, then realized he was correct. "Whoops, I guess this conversation got even more twisted up then I usually do. Anyway, my point Reed is that over the before the accident you tended to more or less work completely and utterly around the clock. But now, you always manage to find enough time for me one way or another.

As far as I'm concerned, the truest difference between Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom, is that Victor let his work control him, and when you get down to the wire you control your work, weather or not you realize it." Reed looked like he wanted to believe her but wasn't quite sure. "What makes you so confident? Victor got that orrigional scar because he pressed on with a scientific experiment that I told him was dangerous, and yet I saw no problem with proceeding with the flight, even when Ben told me I ought to be worried about the unusually strong presence of cosmic rays in our neck of the galaxy at the time.

If anything, that would seem to make me twice the fool because I failed to learn from Victor's mistake." Susan pressed herself even more firmly against Reed's body. "First off, as I understand the story it goes like this. Victor refused to take advice from you, Reed Richards, on the subject of mathematics. I don't care how smart you say he was, to me doing something like that sounds like a great way to get in the running for a Darwin Award. But he went ahead, and it failed in EXACTLY the way you told him it would fail.

Yes Ben said we should be more worried about cosmic rays then you were, but in all fairness to him, who was he to tell you how to design a spaceship? Yes he got a degree in engineering, but you got one in engineering as well and, well basically just about every other hard science I can think of. Besides, Ben's always been the 'slow and steady' type, and it works for him, heck it works for most of us who would probably be better off if we weren't playing around with the kinds of thing you work with in here.

You did what you felt right, and sometimes the only way to make progress is to do things that seem stupid in retrospect. Flying a kite in a thunderstorm with a key attached to it sounds a lot like the eighteenth century version of 'why don't we just take this ship into space and see what happens' to me.

I mean isn't that what science is supposedly all about? Deciding to go ahead and try something that 'd never been done or at least not done in a certain way before, so that people can find out what happens?" Reed nodded, though only with half his usual enthusiasm.

"Yes, but also one should take in mind the possible danger to human life, or else you can end up crossing the line between science and sadism. There's a reason that they decided to detonate the first atomic bomb in Los Alimos where they could be sure there wouldn't be any civilians who were harmed by it, and even then a blind woman who was miles away still claimed to have been able to see it.

Though I suppose I should consider myself lucky that the cosmic ray storm happened during our ship's maiden voyage rather then the theoretical second one to which I was planning on inviting prominent members of he press along for." Susan burst into another helpless gale of laughter.

"Yeah, I can agree with you a hundred percent. I've had more then enough of dealing with members of the press when I've got superpowers and they don't, facing them on even footing would probably drive me up a wall. Can you imagine what would happen if one of them decided to use their powers for evil, well more evil? 'Run in fear mortals, or else I the Red Pen will cross you 'write' out of existence!'

But to bring the story back on to its original track, Reed ever since you became Mr. Fantastic, you've always been able to make time for me. And when our kids are born I'm confident that you'll always be able to make time for them. I mean until my mother's accident... my dad was almost always busy from nine to five working as a doctor, but I never felt..."

As a result of what she was quite sure was completely a matter of pregnancy hormones getting the better of her, Susan suddenly felt herself tearing up and momentarily reducing any attempt she made at speech to nothing more then a high pitched sob. Reed held her gently and eventually it passed..

Once she felt confident in her ability to speak clearly, Susan wiped a tear from her own eyes, and managed a weak smile. "Okay, sorry about that. Anyway, the moral of the story is that just cause we have children, doesn't mean you have to spend every moment of you're day with them, that's my job as their mother."

She followed that comment up with a quick chuckle to show that she wasn't completely serious. "Anyway, I'm sure our kids will be just fine if you spend eight hours a day in the lab, eight hours of family activity, and eight of sleep, barring supervillians that need to be dealt with. Well okay, maybe seven hours of sleep, and one addition hour of activities with just me that are deffinently not 'family oriented' so to speak.

Yeah you'll have less time to work in your lab then you do right now, but marriage and parenthood are all about compromise. In this case I'll agree to put my trust in you when it comes to matters of the head, and you can trust me when it comes to matters of the heart, speaking of which..." "You're ready?" "More then. Why don't we have some fun and see if we can't discover what other compromises we can reach tonight?"

--

"And this is the subject in question." Susan began to uncoil herself from little bit of play wrestling that she and Gale had been taking part in their two visitor's arrived so that she could stand on her own two legs and face them. Seeing Nick Fury side by side with Reed almost triggered a tiny bit of unintentional deja vu.

If she hadn't known better and had seen the standing side by side when Reed had his original body she could have fairly easily believed that they were older and younger brother. Nick had that exact same hairstyle that Reed used to have, brown hair worn short, with the brown giving way to streaks of white on either side. He also was wearing a black eyepatch over his right eye, and a dark blue uniform that had several white belts attached to it which where probably meant to hold the kind of gadgetry a super super secret agent would want to have on him at all times.

There were also three different (obvious) holsters, one at shoulder height, one by his chest, and one strapped to his right ankle, though he'd been gracious enough to lave them empty, unless of corse he had some kind of invisible guns in them which if not exactly being a smart money bet wasn't too implausible sounding either.

It was at this point that Susan proceeded to act on instinct and make what was probably not the best impression. She stretched out an arm and used it to create an air tight seal around the tip of the lit cigarette that Nick Fury had been smoking. She held it for a couple of moments as she waddled her way over and by the time she was pulled it back her arm only had to go about a foot or so, and her face was starting to turn a reddish hue.

"You'll have to excuse me Mr. Fury, but though Reed's got a list as long as my arms about all the stuff that I don't have to worry about that most pregnant woman do, second hand smoke is on the much shorter list of things I still need to avoid." Nick took the extinguished cigarette out of his mouth, looked at it for a few moments, and then after doing a perfunctionary check of the hanger and seeing that here weren't any conveniently placed trash cans, decided tucking the cigarette behind his ear would be more appropriate then tossing it on the floor.

"Perfectly understandable, if I'd been thinking far enough ahead I would have gotten rid of it before Reed even opened the door. Besides I'm trying to cut back anyway. I take it your Susan Storm also known as Ultra Woman?" "The one and only."

The two exchanged handshakes, much like Benjamin Grimm Nick Fury had a firm and to the point handshake, it was probably the kind of thing the military had certain protocols for like saluting. Then Nick turned his attention to the other female occupant of the hanger.

"Just for the record you didn't make this thing right Reed? Because Uncle Sam has better things to do with his money then pick up the bill when an otherwise law abiding citizen intentionally creates life and then gets tired of looking after it." Reed shook his head, he was also going more or less unarmed dressed only in a full body unstable molecule uniform and he synthetic facemask.

"She isn't, if you checked those files I sent you regarding Professor Gilbert's statements..." Nick waved Reed off before he could go any further. "I did, I just wanted to hear you say it again face to face, which I suppose is another idea I could have thought through a bit more thoroughly.

I take it since you let these two girls hang out together the one we're going to think about taking off you're hands is fairly docile?" As if understanding that she was the subject of the conversation (or perhaps just upset about having her and Susan's play time interrupted) Gale paced over to the other three, carefully examining this man she had never met before.

"Well she certainly seems to have become more docile since she moved in into the Baxter Building. As for letting her hang around, she and Susan have a unique bond to say the least the details of which I assessed..." "In the file I know. Apparently gaining superpowers haven't done anything to affect your thoroughness which is I suppose I should be thankful for good thing.

Though now I understand why I can distinctly remember one of our professors claiming he'd either need a forklift or a hernia operation after he got your term paper." Susan snickered, that was a new story to her and one that sounded incredibly likely. "Well I'd think that a man in your profession would appreciate thoroughness and I figured at worst you'd just delegate it to one of your subordinates. So where does your current opinion stand on he Dragon Woman situation?"

Gale drew in a very deep breath through her nose, apparently sampling Nick's scent. "Well I must admit, she does fall pretty much smack dab in the middle of what's 'normal' for The Farm. She also seems fairly good natured, certainly next to Simba at least. He's a genetically engineered white liger that HYDRA apparently had plans to mass produce to serve as shock troops, instruments of chaos or perhaps something even more twisted for all I know.

He weighs a solid ton, so suffice to say, it took more then a whip and a chair to get his attention." "Liger?" Just like Susan expected, Reed didn't miss an opportunity to explain. "They're what you get when you cross a male lion and a female tiger, as opposed to the results of a female lion and a male tiger which is known as a tigon. Liger's are the largest feline in the world, and doubtlessly one of the largest land predators, I believe that they can natural weigh close to half a ton.

It'd be unpleasant to say the least to run into one which was hungry enough to consider eating human flesh. Though I'd never heard of one being bred with the 'white' fur coloring found among tigers, but it'd probably be doable." Nick just nodded along calmly but then he'd probably already heard all of this beforehand.

"Moral of the story, Simba and Gale aren't the only 'monsters' that we look after and study at The Farm, humanely of course!" He added that last clause after seeing the magnificent scowl that Susan's face turned into a few moments after he mentioned the word "study" to them.

"By the way Nick, jus for reference where exactly does SHIELD and the government in general stand on the Fantastic Four just in case I need to feel it might be a good idea to contact you again?" Nick's fingers twitched towards a certain pouch of one of his belts, and Susan couldn't help but guess that its contense was probably several mates of the item currently tucked behind his ear.

"Officially the United States government doesn't appreciate it when it's citizens decide to punish criminals without so much as asking what we think of the idea, let alone waiting to hear our answer.

Needless to say, you can expect us to make this displeasure evident the very moment that the president gets back from his executive ski trip to hell. Because the politicians in Washington would have to commit political suicide on a level you normally only see among lemmings before they decide to start spending the taxpayers money on dealing with people who are actively saving the taxpayers money by the truckload.

Not to mention unlike your run of the mill super powered vigilantes you four spare us the headache that crops up when secret identities and masks are involved, since it means we can get in touch with you any time we want to. With the added weight of the fact that you're Reed Richards, and when that 100 MPH engine that you recently submitted to the US patent office goes into mass production there are probably going to be people who want to turn your birthday into a national holiday.

And the final cherry on top is that from what I've seen so far, while this building is no Helicarrier, it still seems like the kind of place that literally a handful of people could hold off an entire army. The only way that I would even think about attacking it would be to dig a tunnel underneath it, plant explosives and try to bring the whole shebang down from the ground floor. Trying to actually take and hold it? Unpleasant is the only word I'm going to use to describe it while there's a lady in the room."

Reed chuckled and smiled at Nick. "That wouldn't work by the way. After we ran into the Moleman I realized that there was a distinct possibility that we might have foes who would attempt a subterranean approach to attacking the Baxter Building. I've got sensors working round the clock that'll go off if they detect any sort of serious underground movement.

I theorize that it'll also be quite useful for detecting earthquakes in advance, but that's only speculation at the moment." Nick looked down at the floor, and sighed. "Somehow that doesn't really surprise me Reed you've got our numbers and if you feel the situation calls for you, then I'll probably agree with you. You've certainly earned a fair amount of credit with SHIELD considering that every time you deal with alien invaders through a hands on application is about a couple million dollars and several hundred man hours that we can focus on the far to prevalent number of humans working to kill off massive numbers of other humans.

You scratch our back, we scratch yours, and because a fair portion of the city considers you the greatest thing since sliced bread and politicians are always to hook their wagons to a rising star I won't have to worry about taking too much flack form the powers that be."

Susan knew an opportunity when she saw one so she jumped into the conversation. "Does that include the possibilities of me visiting her?" Nick looked down at the floor for a moment before meeting her eyes. "That I'm afraid is going to be impossible, Reed is an old friend but I'm only willing to bend, not break regulations and letting civilians see where The Farm is, and what kind of creatures we keep there is right out of the question."

Susan's face fell, but luckily Nick wasn't finished speaking. "However, taking her to you and back while probably unpleasantly expensive would at least not violate national security. Besides, as long as you folks are saving us more money then it costs pull the round trip off, it counts as a win cost wise. Just make sure to bring the issue to our attention about, six months in advance, but then that's government efficiency for you. I'm supposedly in charge of the SHIELD, and the only one way I could attend your wedding, was to point out that's there is a distinct chance that something might go rather horribly wrong and set it up as a mission since I can't arrange a vacation day with only a week's notice.

Moments like that make a man long to be a field agent again, but if I wasn't in charge of SHIELD then someone else would in my place and probably screwing up left and right. We've all got our own little burdens, you go put yourselves on the line because you feel its the right thing to do, I've got to deal with beurcrates, red tape, and budgets.

If I' had my choice I'd rather be dealing directly with the evil villains, but at this point I'm just arguing myself in circles aren't I?" This statment was greeted with a pair of nods to which he responded with a simple shrug. "Well like the song says 'a policeman's life is not a happy one' and its true today as it was back when it was written. Still doesn't mean there aren't good parts to life, like seeing what you've done with your life.

Though it's a bit weird find myself dealing with a Reed Richards who's taller then I am, not to mention one who could make the kind of mistakes in foresight that would lead to his current situation." "Are you referring to how we got our superpowers, or my current 'delicate' condition. Since with a certain amount of retrospect both of them could be considered mistakes which lead to happy, if unintended consequences." Nick looked down at her pregnant belly and then up at her face and the giant dragon that was silently leaning over shoulder. "Well why don' you tell me?"

--

"This is rather awkward." Since they were going to be getting married in a week Reed and Susan had decided that unless the world was suddenly in danger again, they'd use the time to get some practice dancing. Sadly Susan's swollen midsection was making things a bit more difficult then they otherwise might have been. But all the same she approached the task with good humor, and was more then willing to use her powers for all they were worth. At the moment her arms were stretched long enough to let Reed hold them without worrying about bumping into her belly.

Of course because they were already elongated Reed was slightly afraid that if he pulled on them too hard they'd end up turning into long limp blue noodles, or he'd end up unbalancing her to such a degree that she fell forward. Which meant that Susan had to summon up her own momentum to move in one direction or another, which in turn meant that she fairly quickly fell several steps behind him.

"You know, if you'd let me lead then we wouldn't be having this problem." Reed just smiled at Susan as the two prepared for another try. "Susan, there are a great many differences between the dance floor and the bedroom, for example in the former the man always leads."

Susan hung her head slightly (stretching it in the process) before twisting it to look at Reed and smiling. "Well I guess the waltz isn't really my style any more. So why don't we try something a little spicier...?" Susan's arms went from only being slightly stretched to a pair of blue pythons that wrapped themselves around Reed's back, and pulled forward.

Reed was yanked forward into Susan who let gravity take its course with both their bodies which laid to her laying on the floor looking up at Reed and smiling.. "Like the horizontal tango? After all, when it comes to that dance I already know all the moves, and how to work around the fact that I'm pregnant."

Reed of course knew better then to waste energy struggling, instead he just settled for speaking in a calm firm voice. "Susan, if we can't manage to dance in our unstable molecule uniforms we're never going to be able to pull it off with you in a dress." Susan's pouted cutely and batted her eye lashes, her sky blue eyes seeming to grow slightly larger. "Please Reed? Susy horny!"

As if to prove her point the various extension so of Susan's body began to writhe and thrash about. But Reed didn't let it throw him. "We've both got to learn to waltz before we can tango." Susan pout turned went from seductive to actually depressed and her body went limp. "Dam, we're not even married yet and already you're tired of having sex with me. You men are all the same, a couple fun romps to ill my body with your kids and then all you want to do is dance and talk about astrophysics...

I'll need a moment to get myself in order, and if its not too much to ask try and meet me halfway on this Reed, at the moment it certainly feels like I'm the only one who is using their powers for our benefit."

Susan pulled her limbs back to normal then preformed a very impressive stretching routine that managed to get her once again standing on her own two legs, something that Reed achieved much more easily. As he once again took Susan's outstretched arms, he directed his gaze at Susan's belly before returning it to his face. "All right then, let give this a try."

Reed clenched his teeth slightly as he started to generate a pair of telekentic hands that pushed up on Susan's belly. "There, what do you think of that?" Susan stroked her belly for a moment as if making sure that it was still there. "That actually feels really good, okay let's take another shot at this..."

Without Susan's belly pressing down on her, she proved much more capable of keeping up with Reed. That said it was still there, still affecting her body's moment. Which was why one a bit too exuberant spin later the two were once again laying horizontally on the floor, though this time it was Susan on top of Reed instead of the other way around.

"You know Doctor Richards the way this is going a girl could rather easily get the wrong impression don't you think?" Reed just smiled, Susan was of course heavier then she used to be, but her pregnant belly distributed the weight in such a way that having it on top of him wasn't crushing him, not that he'd like to try and be intermit with her in his current position.

"Really? A girl might get the impression that I'm not out of my mind in love with her?" There was a sparkle in Susan's blue eyes. "Well then I guess I might have been wrong about that. Since you were the one who messed up this time around, now can we head off some place private and let me do the dance of the five circles?"

Reed was genuinely intrigued. "Dance of the five circles?" "Sort of like the dance of the seven veils except the five circles refer to, well one is my head , the next two are my breasts, the fourth is my belly and the fifth is my..." "I do believe I can guess. And I don't see how I can argue with an offer like that. Although I'm a bit surprised that you're not worried about looking foolish at your wedding."

Susan rolled herself off Reed and went back to stroking her belly. "I think no mater what I do unless I'm using my powers to hide this thing, which I can't say I feel like doing, I'm going to end up looking ridiculous one way or another. But there are two times when a woman can always count on people being willing to tell her she's beautiful: when she's in her wedding dress, and when she's pregnant. I figure no matter what I do I'll only get complimented.

--

Days continuned to pass, Reed went in for his plastic surgery and came back. Susan had a very strange dream that night on the eve of her wedding. For one thing, it was a painfully realistic dream.

Wake up, get dressed, go to her wedding and at first it seemed like everything was going fine, up until, "if anyone has reason why these two should not be wed let them speak now or forever hold their peace" and then it happened. A section of the floor collapsed, and the Moleman and several of his pet monsters climbed up into the church. Then a spaceship crashed through the roof and a skrull strike team climbed out. Then Namor arrived riding a miniature tidal wave into the church, determined to wash the Moleman and his army back below the depths where they had come from rather then let them come between Susan and the man she loved, even if it wasn't him.

At which point the archvillians of the superheroes who had been invited to the wedding stared bursting into the place as well. The dream ended up with her on Gale's shoulder charging into the churning melee in her unstable molecule bridal gown, at which point it all sort of devolved into one huge spiral of colors, sounds and other general bric a brac and chaos.

Which made sense, since there really wasn't much that could have happened that would have been more absurd than a pregnant woman in a bridal gown riding a draconic steed into battle. She opened her eyes found herself looking up a the ceiling, and sighed. "For the record, today is our wedding day, right?"

Apparently Reed was already awake because his answer came at once. "Of course it is Susan." She drew in a very deep breath as she subconsciously started counting the number of tiles in the ceiling. "Did you by any chance have a weird dream that involved basically all of old foes showing up at our wedding?" Reed reached over and gently rubbed her belly.

"Can't say I did Susan. Truth be told, I had a somewhat indecent dream about what happens tonight after we've actually said our 'I do's to each other." For some reason that reassured her quite a bit. Maybe it was because while she was thinking about all the things that could go wrong and he was thinking about all the things that could go right, it was probably a clear sign that she was just having a crazy (probably pregnancy hormone induced) dream.

After all, considering the number of superheroes who were going to be present, and the fact that people usually became supervillians because they didn't get along well with others. Gather a whole bunch of them together in one place with the intent of making them cooperate together? Whatever plan they tried to pull off would probably crash the moment it got off the ground, and it didn't, well then Susan would just have to work her way up onto Gale's shoulders and the two would make sure it went down in flames.

--

As it turned out, she was only half, a quarter, well at most an eight right. Namor did indeed show up even though he hadn't been invited, but he hadn't brought any of his subjects with him. He was dressed in a simple tuxedo, and for the most part just stood their with eyes that were cold as glacier daring anyone to try and eject him from the premises.

He even bowed politely to them offered to kiss the back of Susans hand and congratulated Reed on achieving what he could only dream of doing. To his credit he made absolutely no comments on the subject of Gale who took one sniff and then began to glare right back at him. That was doubtlessly in his favor, since it was a situation which to Susan's mind was rife with possible commends made about pets, leashes, collars, and other double entendres.

But that was it, if any supervillians made an attempt to disrupt their wedding then Nick Fury's men evidently gave them the bum's rush before Susan realized they had entered the premises. So it all went along smooth as clockwork and eventually they reached that all encompassing moment.

"Then I now pronounce you man and wife, you may kiss the bride." Reed lifted up Susan's veil with one hand and took off mask with the other. What Susan saw was so startling that she more or less just stood there while and Reed had to do all the leaning in for their kiss. That wasn't how they had planned it, but they made do, and something told her that would be the story of their entire marriage, well there were worse stories out there.

As if sensing the importance of the event Gale chose that moment to draw in a large breath and let it out as a blast of flame. Luckily it was aimed straight up, and at least it was hot enough to cause a clean burn so they didn't have to worry about falling debris. So the good news was that the big hole in the ceiling was the only result of Gale's exuberance, the down side was, well the big hole in the ceiling. When their lips eventually parted, Susan had could only say one thing. "We're going to have to pay for that aren't we?"

--

"Wow, I'm still in shock. I mean, well look at you." Reed nodded. Underneath the mask had been his face. Literally his face. It was exactly the same way that she remembered it, which after not having seen it for around ten months now meant it doubtlessly qualified as a sight for sore eyes.

Well okay it wasn't his face exactly as she remembered it, his hair was still black, but everything else fell perfectly in place, or at least well enough that Susan couldn't tell the difference with nothing but her memories to compare it against. "Well the doctors said it wasn't too difficult a job since they had plenty of pictures of what they were trying to achieve. The eyes are something of a cheat of course, colored contacts, but I thought you'd appreciate the effort."

Susan found herself laughing. "So for the record, synthetic face masks, plastic surgery, eye color changing contact lenses, all these your good with. But you draw the line at hair dye when it comes to altering your appearance?" Reed's eyes suddenly went wide. "In retrospect, yes I probably should have thought of that." Susan just smiled at her husband.

"Well I've got a pretty extensive knowledge of hair care products, so I'll help you find the right shade and properly apply the stuff. Though sadly I don't think there's much you can do about how it grows and what style it takes, that varies from person to person and nothing can change it."

Reed slowly removed his left hand form Susan's and began to run it through his black hair. "If it's all the same to you, that sounds like more work then its worth, so maybe I'll just keep my hair the way it is." Susan elongated the fingers of her free hands, and stroked Reed's hair as well. "Seems fair enough to me. Besides, no reason to start a habit we're going to have to give up, and if people see me with my blond tresses, and you with brown hair, but our children already have a mix of black and blond hair then some people might get the wrong impression."

No sooner were the words out of her mouth then she felt another impression being made upon her. "Reed!" At once he let go of her other hand to place both hands on her shoulders. "Is something wrong?" A wide smile split Susan's face as she retracted her left arm and used her right hand to point a rather predominant part of her anatomy south of where Reed was holding her.

"No, I'm fine. It's just that I think I felt my kids move for the first time, that's normal right?" Reed lowered his hands so that they now rested across the apex of Susan's belly. "Of course it is. Movements tends to intensify during the third trimester, but they start during the second around four or five months.

So you're right on target, it is just your body's way of letting you know that your placenta is now fully functioning." Susan just staired at him for a moment, and sighed. "Okay then, wow talk about two seperate important events that I never planned to have happen on the same day."

Reed slowly offered Susan the chance to take his hands once again and she accepted it. "Seems like a bit much to have it all happen so close together I guess..." Susan shook her head and smiled. "Maybe to you, but right now, I already know for sure I'm never going to forget my wedding, and that's just the way I wanted it."

--

"Here goes nothing." Susan opened the door to Gale's room. Her draconic daughter was evidently glad to see her back in a Fantastic Four outfit instead of that weird white thing and at once made her way over to playfully rub the crest of her ridge up against Susan's belly emitting a trill of joy. Susan for her part stretched out her arms around Gale's neck returning the gesture of affection. "Yeah, always good to see you too girl. It's just that I came here to warn you that we aren't going to be together much longer."

Gale let out a whimper of discontent cocking her head an angle to show incomprehension. "Yeah I know, I don't like it either, it's just he way it's got to be." Gale took a few steps forward, then sat down apparently trying to protectively curl her body in a complete 360 degree circle around her minuscule mother. Susan momentarily gave up trying to explain the complexities of the matter, and just stretched out an arm to scratch Gale's ears, a trick that as usual lead to her letting out a cry of delight.

"This would be so much easier if I actually knew how much English you understood, and what exactly you're trying to say back..." "I might be able to help with that Susan." Susan looked over at her husband who had of course come along with her to say good bye to their somewhat peculiar charge.

"If you're just getting ideas about some invention to make right now then I doubt you'll be able to build it in time. Of course if you're about to surprise me with some kind of ready made talk to dragons helmet as a post wedding gift, then after all this is over I will not stop laying you until you tell me to or I literally start to see bits of brain start to ooze out your ears."

Reed slowly walked towards the two, clearly expecting the slight growl Gale threw in his direction. "It's not exactly an invention Susan, just an extension of my powers that I think might work. I've never attempted it before, but I think if should in theory be able to generate what amounts to a direct telepathic phoneline between the two of you.

Of course it'd only stay open as long as I concentred, and I'll need physical contact to open it. Granted even considering all that, it is still a much simpler solution then directly trying to overcome the difference between Gale's vocal chords and a normal human's. I'll give it a try if you think you can get her to hold still long enough."

Susan began to slowly rub her hands along the back of Gale's neck speaking as soothing a voice as she could muster. "You heard daddy, right? He's going to do what he does best, figure out solutions to problems, and then we're going to be able to actually understand each other. All you have to do is hold still, and you can do that for mommy can't you?'

Gale nodded slowly and Reed rolled up his sleaves, first touching a finger to the center of Susan's head, then to the center of the Gale's, at which point he took several steps back. "That should do it, discuss." Susan who had more experience with psychic communication decided that she should try to take the first proverbial step. /Gale, can you hear me?\ A might scaled tail slapped the ground in obvious recognition of her words. /No, don't answer me like that..\

A piteous whimper let Gale's reptilian jaws and Susan quickly returned to massaging that scaly neck. /Mommy isn't mad at you girl, she knows its your first time trying this. Listen, I want you to try and think about me, and think about what you want to say really intently. Can you do that?\ There was complete and utter silence for a few moments, and then it happened. /Yeah, at least I think I can...\

Susan just about jumped out of her skin with joy. "Reed, she did it!" She stretched out her arms to entwine him, but Reed just smiled at Susan's overly dramatic embrace. "Darling, you and I have the rest of our lives to be husband and wife, but you've only got about another 24 hours for you and Gale to be mother and daughter."

Susan was just about dumbstruck by that as well. After all, how many men were out there in the world who would be willing to let their wives spend their wedding nights with a giant lizard in the literal sense of the phrase. "Okay, I'm going to have to think up some new kind of extra special sex jus so that I can give it to you, good thing I've got so much experience in that area." /Ewww mommy I'm right here...\

Susan blushed beat red, and redirected her attention back to her original purpose in coming here. /Oh yeah, so I guess you understand English a little bit better then I ever suspected.\ The tail rose up, but it settled gently back down to the ground. /I've understand most of the stuff you've said mommy, but umm are you sure daddy speaks he same language you do?\ Susan couldn't help it, she chuckled and then proceeded to rub that huge chin.

/Believe me, you're not the only one that has that reaction to him.\ Of course Susan's mirth quickly subsided as she remembered the purpose of her visit. /But like I was saying, I'm afraid we're gonna have to go our seperate ways.\ Another low piteous moan left Gale's throat. /Why mommy? Did I do something wrong? I wana stay here!\

Susan stretched out her arms a little more and started to calmly stroke Gale's ears, the last thing any of them needed right now was for a rampaging Dragon Woman. /Gale, if it was my choice then you wouldn't have to leave. But there are some things that even I can't control.\ Gale's head rose up directing a scaly glare straight at Reed. /It's because of him isn't it?\

Susan thought about quickly forming a leash out of her arms around Gale's neck before she could do anything foolish, but decided against it. For one thing it would only be sending a message that she didn't trust her, and for another once Gale did start moving all Susan would achieve was getting dragged along like a chiwawa tethered to a great dane.

/In part, but he's also the person responsible for finally letting us, well finally letting me understand you. Besides, it isn't about him, it's about this.\ Susan patted her pregnant belly, and sure enough Gale turned away from Reed, her temper mellowing slightly. /How do they come into this?\

Susan tried to think very shallowly for a few moments before she started thinking very deeply. /You're strong aren't you?\ Gale flapped her wings and let loose with a mighty roar. /Strong enough to make anyone who tries to keep us apart regret it mommy!\ Luckily she didn't try to do anything other then that, so Susan just waited until she was done flaunting her strength before commenting

/Well that is exactly my point. You're very strong Gale, and of course I'm very strong, and so is daddy. But, there are people out there who use the fact that they're very strong to take advantage of others who aren't, and one of the things that your parents pride themselves on is making people who think like that regret it.

More importantly, before too long I'm going to have a bunch of children of my own, except unlike you they won't be very strong, certainly not a first, in fact at first they'll be very weak. So when that time comes, those kids will need me to look after them infinitely more then you ever did. So while me looking after you here, and us being together takes up a lot of time, in the right situation you could look after yourself just fine. So while neither of us like it, that'd be what is best for a lot more people then just me and you.\

Gale's body relaxed, her head drooping downwards and filled with melancholy. /I understand. You look after me so well that I don't suppose I could expect you no to do the same for others who need it./ Susan nodded, slowly and sadly. She really was going to miss Gale, not only had she helped Susan take her maternal instincts for a test drive, but Susan was going to miss the her various chirps, trills and other cries, finding out that she was smart enough to truly communicate with her (even if not vocally) was just one more bitter pill to swallow.

/Yep. Duty before pleasure. But the good news is that we're not gonna have to part ways just yet.\ Gale chuffed slightly, bringing her tail forward so that Susan could rest her belly on it. /So tell me mommy, what is this place I'm going to going to be like?\ Susan sighed casting her eyes in Reed's direction for a moment, wishing she had fewer gaps in her knowledge, but then returning her attention to more pressing matters.

/I don't know myself because I've never been there, but if what I've heard is correct then everyone there will be like you. Well not in the sense of wings, flies, breathes fire, but in the sense of something out of the ordinary. For all I know, you'll find some hansom dragon swain and next time we meet you'll be the one with the bludging belly or maybe even your own culch of eggs to look after.\

That thought apparently cheered Gale up some. /So well get to see each other again?\ Susan playfully rubbed the great beast's jaw with an elongated arm. /Darn skippy we will! I'm gonna make sure all my kids are happy, and that includes you. It is just that unlike the other kids I'm going to have soon, you don't need me to be happy, just to be happier.

So while I can't make promises about how often we'll get to see each other, you can be sure that it will happen. And when I have my kids, you'll get to see your brothers, sisters, or whatever arrangement of those two phrases I've got inside my body.\ There was a deep rumble from within Gale's body. /You won't look the same once they're outside...\

Susan wasn't quite sure if Gale had said that wistfully, or jus as a statement of fact. /Well my face will be he same, I just won't have this belly. And it's not exactly like it's been a constant, as I'm sure you've noticed its been getting bigger a little at a time every day.\ Gale just nuzzled her playfully. /Not really, you're so small that its only the big things that I notice.\

Susan couldn't help but smile. It really was amazing, the way that this giant 'monster' that had to be close to twice her height and several times her weight looked up to her more or less hanging on her every word. /Listen, if it turns out to be a problem I can just stretch my body to look like whatever you want. I could even do the entire trick where I stretched myself out to look like you do.\

Gale gave a wordless murmur of approval. /So we can go flying then mommmy?\ Susan sighed and decided that now felt like as good a time as any to take some weight off her legs by laying back against Gale, after all as she had pointed out the weight of Susan's body (even her pregnant body) wasn't much more then a footnote to the mighty Dragon Woman. /Well not really the most I can manage using my powers is a glide. But I'll always be glad to perch myself between your wings and then you can take me for a flight sometime.\

/Thanks mommy. So do you think that maybe some day I could come back here to stay? I promise I'll be good...\ The creature's huge eyes only made it look all that much more pitiable. /Sure, eventually. But you're gonna need to wait a long time, luckily Reed says that you've got a natural lifespan that's measured in centuries. So sooner or later you can be an official member of the family.

Like they say, all things come to he, or in this case she, who waits. So till then I guess we're both just gonna have to do a lot of waiting. Though I suppose for tonight we should take advantage of the unique opportunity and do a lot of talking.\ Gale shifted letting loose with a trill of surprise. /About what? I've talked about everything I care about.\

Susan took another moment to carefully study Gale's eyes, she was clearly more intelligent then any other naturally occurring animal, if not quite as intelligent as your average fully grown human. But then she was only about a month old, so how much of that was a lack of experience and how much of that was a the limits of her own intelligence? Susan decided that she probably wouldn't know the answer until she met Gale after the two being apart for a few months or so.

/I don't really know either, but we aren't going to have that much time together so we might as well make good use of it. Tell you what, why don't you talk to me about when you first came alive? Not even Reed is sure about how that happened, I don't suppose you know?\

Gale's entire body shook slightly. /Nahh, it just sort of happened. All of a sudden my eyes were open and I was so alone, and hen suddenly I remembered you mommy and I knew that if I could just get you to myself you'd look after me.\ That was more or less exactly what Susan had expected Gale's thought process to be, but it was nice to know for certain.

She patted Gale's head with one arm and scratched her chin with other. /Well you could have done worse girl, you could have done worse.\ Gale let out a snuffle that sounded like something vaguely apologetic. /Well yeah, though all things considered I think there were better ways to achieve what I was aiming for then the one I went with.\

Susan's arms shifted so that either one held one of Gale's arms. /Listen to your mommy Gale... I've never had the misfortune to get dropped in the middle of nowhere surrounded by people who's language I couldn't speak a word of, and I'm pretty sure its no an experience I'd enjoy. So cut yourself some slack, you did the best that you could.\

--

So with the next morning's light the two parted ways, Susan giving Gale one last pat on the nose, Gale gave Susan one last lick and pressed her head to Susan's belly, then Gale allowed herself to be lead of by the SHIELD agents. Susan for her part walked away even more slowly then current state of pregnancy normally would have made her move.

Unsurpringly she grabbed the first box of kleenex she could find and headed for the hanger, sitting down in the middle of it and pondering how she had never notice exactly how large and empty it was. This was the condition that Reed found her in, and he quickly joined her on the floor. "Pregnancy hormones?"

Susan blew her nose, wiped, her eyes, and shook her head. "Nope. This one I'm woman enough to own up to. I'm probably going to be like this for another couples hours. And in bed tonight I'm probably going to want to just lay there and go to sleep." Reed placed one hand on her right shoulder and the other on her belly. "Should I reschedule our plans to spend the next weekend some place private as nothing but husband and wife?"

Susan shook her head firmly. "Don't worry about it, you know me, big strong superheroine, I'll be good to go by tomorrow. Today though, today is just gonna sorta suck." Reed leaned against his wife comfortingly. Worried that your kids are gonna do the same thing?" A slight 'sniffle' left Susan's mouth and she nodded. "Yep. Knew her for less than a month, only had one real conversation, and still,"

Reed shifted about and placed both hands on Susan's belly. "Well for once you'll be able to say that one of your pets well and truly did go to live happily on a harm." Susan shook her head firmly. "Reed, I realize you're trying to make me feel better, but for once you've got your metaphors thoroughly crossed. To me this wasn't about having to give up a pet because in the future I won't have the time to look after it.

This was about watching my scaled daughter go off to college. I've raised her to the point that she should be able to look after herself, and now she's off to bigger and better things, and while she's busy doing them we'll only get to see each other every so often. Probably take after her father, four years regular college and then four ears of graduate school at least. Eight years doesn't sound like such a long time when I think about it like that. And by the our kids are eight years old then well be able to have Gale move back in again right? Heck by that point we could probably consider her less of a liability and more of security device.

Gale's like way stronger then Johnny, so at the moment I can't think of anyone who comes anywhere near close to trustworthy when it comes to looking after my kids as she would be." Reed smiled and chuckled before responding. "I think you'll need to ask Gale about that when the time comes." Susan had her own chuckle at that prospect. "Something tells me that won't be a problem.

Gale liked to play lots of games with me because of the fact that my elastic body couldn't be harmed by her muscles despite the fact that she'd be able to chew through concrete girders with ease. So a chance for Gale to play games with six little mes? The only thing she'll be upset about is how hard it is to figure out what direction she wants to be looking in! As for our kids, I think by the time they're eight they won't mind the prospect of having a dragon for a nanny and or playmate. Heck for all we know that'll seem downright normal to them growing up around here. Sound like a good idea?"

"Sounds like an excellent one, and Susan, if you could bring yourself to care about someone that much, that quickly, just because they depended on you, think about how it'll feel to have six someone's depending on you." Susan began to rub her own belly, which by this point wasn't so much taking up her lap, as actually forming a new lap on top of her old one.

"Yeah, though part of me wishes they'd hurry up and just get born already, I certainly feel like I'm pregnant enough." Reed gave her a quick smile and momentarily raised up the lower portion of Susan's outfit to inspect something she'd have trouble seeing without using her power or a mirror before returning his gaze to her eyes.

"I've got some bad news then Sue. Your husband didn't see your belly button's shadow, so you're going to have to put up with around another four months of pregnancy." Susan chuckled at Reed's unique way of saying that she was still 'an innie' as the terminology went.

She leaned her head back for a moment, and thought about what she'd look like when her belly button finally did pop outwards like that little tab on a turkey when it was done cooking. Somehow she felt like the giant belly she'd doubtlessly have by then, would be the much more noticeable change.

"Four more months. Thank goodness for superpowers because if my body wasn't elastic no matter how much I love you, you'd probably be very grateful for the fact that you'd always be able to outrun me when I waddled angrily after you for inflicting my current condition on me."

Reed just shrugged. "You wouldn't be the first pregnant woman to have sentiments along those lines. The part about waddling after their husbands at least, not the part about having superpowers." Susan looked down at her belly for a moment and then her stretched over, wrapping itself around Reed's.

"Yeah, I guess I'm sorta unique like that We're the first pair of superpowered people who have managed to knock each other up." Reed smiled and ran a hand through her hair before continuing to run it along her neck as well. "You're unique in plenty of other ways Susan. For example did you know that your skin has become different since the accident?"

Susan's raised her eyebrows. "Good different, or bad different?" Reed reached out and grabbed hold of as much of her body as he could hold. "Fantastically different. I'll admit that it took me a little bit of time to get used to it, but now that I have, I love it. Your skin is always amazingly smooth and just a little cooler than normal human flesh, sort of like being caressed by latex.

I love that feeling, because every single time I feel it, it reminds me that I've got a body again, you're in love with me. Also there's the added bonus that I could pick you out by touch alone in a dark room filled with other women." Susan eyebrows went up again with a slightly different slant to them. "So what exactly am I doing in this dark room filled with other women?"

"I was simply being metaphorical darling." Susan lowered her eyebrows, and smiled. "All right then. Tell you what Reed then why don't you hold me, or at least as much of me as you can." At which point Susan transformed her entire body into one large blue blob and Reed began to slowly pick up one handful after another like he was trying to build one giant snowball out of all the white dust upon his lawn. But Reed Richards was not a man easily daunted by great tasks.


	10. Chapter 10

Time to play a game of good news bad news.

The good news is that this chapter is extra long.

The bad news is that you can expect further updates to come on a bi/tri weekly basis.

The news that you'll have to decide the nature of is that chapters 10 and 11 contain some of the raunchiest material in this fic.

Swelling with love chapter 10 Trust: in which Susan and Reed Richards have guest of both the invited and uninvited variety.

Susan Richards considered her current situation very carefully before voicing her thoughts. "There's a wonderful view of the ocean out our window, but who cares? It's 9:00 AM and I've got the windows drawn, the phone is disconnected, our room is booked for a solid week, yanked, I yanked the phone's power chord out of is sockets, a Fantastic Four communicator is on the nightstand but Johnny understand that if he call us for anything less then a genuine supervillian he'll be paying for it until he rusts.

When the mood feels right I can stretch out a finger and flick the lights off. I think that means I've covered all the bases to a degree that even you would approve of Reed, so why don't we get to work consummating this marriage? I figure with any luck we can do it half a dozen times before we need to plug the phone back in and call room service so they'll bring us lunch. Sound like a plan?"

At Reed's nod she began to coil her body around his. "Wonderful. So what position do you want us to be in when we do it a for the first time as husband and wife?" Reed gave one of those damnably honest answers that couldn't directly disagree with. Well that'd be easier to do if we'd actually taken the time to name some of our more exotic positions."

Susan pouted slightly. "I'm not vain enough to name positions that only I can achieve. If you want to do it though, go ahead." Reed just smiled as he laid on his side looking at Susan who was currently doing the same. "Well to tell the truth I'd actually like to do something different if you don't mind, although it is a little perverse."

Susan's face instantly became an expression of mock horror. "Perverse!? Reed I thought you knew me a better then that!" She chuckled at her own unconvincing words and smiled. "Come on Reed considering everything else we've done, it is going to take a lot to make me feel that something is too perverse to be enjoyable. Go ahead, what's your idea?" Reed sighed. "It'd be easier to show you then explain it." Then he pressed a finger to Susan's forehead and everything went grey.

--

Susan shivered. "Okay, I'm standing around in the middle of nowhere, wearing nothing, with no idea how I got here. I think it is time to be honest with myself and say that I just might have gotten my a little too horny for my own good." Susan looked around again and sighed, all things considered 'middle of nowhere' was being too generous to this place.

Wherever she was they hadn't even heard of technicolour, everything except her was grey, grey, grey, grey, lots of grey mist and other grey stuff. Looking down she couldn't even see what she was standing on because of the grey mist that was rolling over her feet.

Susan just staired for a few moments, and then very slowly something that should have been entirely too obvious suddenly dawned on her. What the hell was going on that was letting her look straight down and even contemplate the possibility of seeing her feet? She pressed her hand to her midsection and felt reasonably well toned muscles that she had been 'out of reach' even to her for the last few months of her life.

Something very wrong was going on. "Let me guess, you'd like an explanation right about now?" Reed walked out of he grey mist and Susan nodded extremely fervently. "Yes, yes, and double or triple yes. You can start with why you've got brown hair again, I'm not pregnant, where we are, how we got there, what happened to my clothes, and anything else you think I'd like to know."

Reed was also naked, Susan wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing, she wasn't going to make any snap judgments until she got some more information. "Where we are is hard to explain even for me. The simple version of it is that 'here' is a temporarily established location in the psychic plane. It is where your imagination meets mine." Which is why we both appear not as we are, but as we truly imagine ourselves to be, not from the perspective of a single moment but looking back and forward on our entire lives."

Susan breathed a small sigh of relief, after all it was unlikely she'd be able to come up with a better explanation than that. "Okay then. A warning beforehand would have been appreciated, but that's in the past. What I'm wondering about is why you consider this as incredibly perverse. We've seen each other naked so many times that it barely even registers any more."

"That's no the perverse part, this is the perverse part." Susan was vaguely aware of the fact that Reed's penis had been erect, but not really finding it something worthy of fixating over. On the other hand when it suddenly more then doubled in size, shooting out towards her wrapping around her right leg and then proceeding to lift her up into the air, that was new.

All of which left Susan hanging upside down her body's weight being supported entirely by her husband's manhood. Clearly this was going to be all kinds of interesting. "So too perverse?" Susan shook her head. "A year ago, too perverse by half. Today, wonderfully endearing. I can't wait to find out what kind of fun we can have..." Susan tried to easily slip of "Reed's" grip but nothing happened.

A very pronounced frown filled her face. "Okay a bit more explanation would be appreciated it.. Why is it that in here you're elastic and I'm not, and if you could put me on the ground while you explain it'd be appreciated, I'm pretty sure I can already feel a headache starting to develop from the way the blood rushing to my head, which considering what we're hear to do is exactly the wrong direction for it to be heading."

With surprising dexterity Reed twisted his genitalia around and left Susan actively sitting on top of her husband's member, which didn't seem to be having any trouble supporting her. "Well like everything else here it is complicated. The long and short of it is that it takes a lot of practice to properly control oneself in here.

I had more or less six months worth of nothing but practice while I didn't have a body. If you want to get something like that done, then you have to imagine it." Susan adjusted her position slightly. "Okay, color me confused, because I'm trying to and its not happening." Reed's brow furrowed slightly.

"I can't say that I know perfectly what you're thinking but I have a theory. When I say imagine, it might be more appropriate to say dream. But it's hard for you to do that, because you're so intimately familiar with stretching your body in real life and thus I it's probably hard for you to properly dream about something like that convincingly.

You're thinking about what you know works in real life, rather then properly imagining, but I'm fairly certain I could help you with that given time. Though time we spend working on that is time we couldn't spend doing other things..." Susan sighed. "Reed, at this very moment I'm currently straddling your penis, no your body, just your penis. I know I'm not a genius like you but I think I can guess what you're working towards.

Just one small, well not exactly small thing. There are horses out there for which this thing would be way too big and even though I'm currently knocked up like a mare in April, if I can't stretch on command, well you do the math." Reed of course was always good at math, in a few moments it was a much more conventional sized member (well at least if you measured in width lengthwise was another story all together) that was curling itself around her nude form.

"This better?" "Yeah, that looks like a perfect fit." "By the way Susan, if you're currently feeling a little uneasy because of you're sense of balance being off, well I think I know a way that I could make you feel pregnant again." "Oh really?" Splosh. Testicles the size of beanbags, who would guess that such an expression could be without embellishment. "This is gonna take a while isn't it?" "Why, do you have some place to go?" "No, I was just savoring the taste of sweet anticipation."

--

Susan sat up in her hotel bed. She quickly elongated and retracted her fingers just to make sure that herr powers still worked, and smiled privately to herself at the result. Then she preformed a somewhat more esoteric examination of her body and much to her surprise found that the lower half of unstable molecule uniform was dry as a bone.

Apparently you could have what amounted to more sex then you knew what to do with on the psychic plane without having it actually qualify as a wet dream, well that was a nice little side perk. Sort of like that beautiful view their room had, not having it wouldn't have kept them from enjoying themselves, but it was still a nice little side dish alongside the main course.

"That was interesting, and fun beyond belief, so what do you feel like doing next?" What came out of Reed's voice could best be described as a undulating gurgle, the kind of thing movies always had Frankenstein (make that Frankenstein's monster, Reed would he for her to make obvious mistakes about great literature even in her mind) was known for doing. "Sorry?"

She heard his response in her mind rather then in her ears. /What I want is rather immaterial considering that more or less all I'll be capable of doing for quite a while is laying here.\ Susan extended her neck, circling it around so that she could look at Reed while he was laying behind her. "I know I've always bounced back first from sex, but I did I really take that much out of you?"

Reed's head shook very, very weakly, and he was still sticking with psychic communication. /No it's just that there's a divide between mind and body Susan, it's not an easy divide to cross, and the more thoroughly you cross it, the harder it is to work your way back.

You see that's the reason I suggested we didn't do something like that on beforehand., bzecause doing it makes me focus so heavily on my mind that it's going to take me a while before I can switch gears and start using my body properly.\ Susan rolled over and was able to look directly at Reed. "Really? Ouch I'm sorry, exactly how bad is it?"

Reed's fingers twitched. /It gets better the more practice I have at it. I think I can manage rudimentary motor functions. Chew food, bowel and bladder control, probably can manage a fairly good hobble with your help. Not much more then that however.\ Susan sighed and lay back.

"Well I still feel a little bit bad because I'm at least partialy responsible for your current condition. So I guess I'll just lay here and wait for it to pass." /Well Susan even though my body is more or less shot, the very fact that I'm able to communicate mentally fairly easily with you says that my mind is ready for some fairly unstrenuous mental activity. Put your head to one of my hands if you would...\

--

"So I take it by unsternious mental activates you mean helping me figure out how things work in here, rather then doing each other like minks in heat?" Reed nodded and Susan looked down, even though she could actually see he grey mist rolling over certain portions of her body she couldn't feel it. "So can we have clothes here?" "Of course."

Reed was still standing and he held out an open palm toward the ground. Grey mist suddenly rose up and began to coil around first his hand and then the rest of his body. In the process it transformed from grey to blue, and eventually solidified into a blue Fantastic Four uniform.

"You can have anything here if you can imagine it the right way." Susan tried and though a couple strands of the mist rose upwards, they sank back into the general swirl before making it halfway towards to her. Reed approached her slowly. "Try closing your eyes." Susan did and then she thought and, and thought, and thought about having her unstable molecule uniform on.

"Well that's something." Reed's words snapped her out of her trance, and she opened her eyes. True enough, she was now wearing her familiar blue bra and panties. She slowly stood up, running a hand along the garments and nodded, to their credit they felt spot on. "You said that you had six months of practice, so while you didn't have a body you more or less just spent all your time here. That must of been nice..."

"It was undeniably convenient at times. The moment I had an idea I could take it from the design stages to 'reality' in seconds. Then I'd be able to play around with it, and in short I'd be able to fully create and test things before I so much as lifted a telikentic finger. I also could create 'mirrors' that let me know what was going on around myself or any of you. But for all of that, I'm pretty sure it was also driving me insane one day a time."

Susan took a single step backwards in shock. "Really?" Reed nodded as if he had never been more sure of anything in his life. "Yes. As you might have noticed, reality is a fairly nebulous concept in here, and in theory this place lets me have whatever I want, from there it's nothing more then a bit of applied logic. If power corrupts then absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But luckily because of you I was able to stay sane." Susan took two steps forward now, twisted her neck to the side slightly, and realizing that she couldn't do it any more then slightly compared to how far she could normally twist it. "How?" Reed held out his right hand, his eyebrows slanting downwards in anger.

"Simple, because even in here I don't have it all. Observe." More mist began to coil upwards beside him taking the form of countless interlocking gears, and other bits of and pieces of machinery. "The make up of the average human body can be defined as a complicated system of interlocking joints which allow for a certain range of movements." The motions of his right hand was performing was changed slightly. "Oil could be seen used as a replacement for blood, synthetic human skin could be carefully applied over it, sensors which gather and process visual information could be designed just like eyes, hair would obviously no particular challenge."

More mist washed over the thing turning into skin, leaving behind an extremely familiar looking naked woman. "Put it all together and what do you have?" Reed clenched his right hand into a fist and the faux Susan Richards he'd created instantly fell apart, its components quickly turning back into mist.

"An oversized children's toy, no more, no less. Because eve in here the Turing Test is the only test I've never been able to pass." Susan was still struggling slightly to deal with the construction and destruction of another of her. "The what?" Reed sighed. "The Turing Test its very a simple. It typically works along the following lines, a person is lead into a room with a computer that they type questions into and get responses back.

The goal is to see if the person asking the questions can tell if the response are being typed by a person in an adjoining room, or generated by a piece of computer software. Personally I'm sorely tempted to view it in a manner similar to absolute zero, where its not an attainable goal in and of itself, only something we can measure how close we come to it, but in a universe full of shapeshifting aliens I'm not ready to disregard the possibility that someone somewhere has been able to perfectly pass it.

Doing so would mean designing something mechanical in nature that's able to perfectly appear human mentally as well as physically. Victor said he had done it, but personally I believe that his claims in that area were based on his own twisted views of humanity. A man who thinks as little of human emotion and the suffering of those around him as Victor Von Doom would probably be able to design a robot that perfectly imitated him.

But regardless of whatever else I could make in here, I couldn't 'make' you. So that determination not to let what happened to me keep us apart, that was line which kept me tether to the world which existed outside my own head. It was also something that Victor managed to exploit as well, it was when he pointed out to me that if I had a body again then I'd have a chance with you that got me to agree with him.

Well I'd say that I hope the way things have turned out would leave Victor rolling in his grave, but as we both know his body actually is, rolling in the hay with you. Because now thanks to him, I not only have you out there, but as of today finally manage to have you in here as well!"

That Susan knew exactly how she was going to respond to, taking a moment to seductively lick her lips and shake her hair. "So do you feel ready to have me in here again?" For an answer Reed just smiled as he instantly dispersed his clothing back into grey mist and soon enough Susan once again found her entire hundred and somesuch pound body being supported by one boneless mix of flesh, blood and muscle.

Reed adjusted his posture and Susan found herself sliding down Reed's pole until she landed on top of him, knocking both of them to the ground. "Okay let's do it one more time this way, then I want you to spend some time teaching me how to stretch in here, so that we can play the Amazing Anaconda versus the Perverse Python."

"I thought you said you weren't vain enough to start naming positions that only we could achieve?" "There's a fine line between naming sexual positions that only you can achieve and naming sexual games that only you can play. And I promise I'll let you know what it is as I find out exactly what it is."

--

Saying it was a week in paradise would have been an understatement, but sadly not even Reed could find a more appropreate word or phrase, so paradise was what they went with.

--

"So how are the happy couple doing?" Susan smiled broadly at Ben's question glad to see the two of them were completely over whatever awkwardness that might have existed between them, but then meeting Alica probably had helped him quite a lot with that.

"Reed carried me in through the threshold. And a week later the poor dear was so tired I had to carry him out of it." "Thanks that great sis, glad to know you had fun, let's just leave it there before you say something that I'll regret hearing."

--

Things settled back to normal in the Baxter Building from then. Nothing had gone noticeably wrong during the week afterwards. Reed even went so far as to arrange another bit of goodwill on behalf of the Fantastic Four towards the other superhero groups that operated mainly in the city.

Five days after they got back from their week long honey moon, The Baxter Building had visitors. While the Fantasticar had a suitably somewhat surreal appearance to go with its name the X-Men's vehicle of choice the Blackbird looked as simple as its name suggested.

Susan didn't have the air force experience that Ben did, but she could tell pretty sure it had either been built based on a military aircraft, or had actually been a piece of military equipment that had been acquired through circumstances that Susan wasn't about to poke her elastic nose into.

A hatch lowered, and the first thing that came down it was a bald man in a mechanical wheel chair who was wearing an ordinary business suit. Suffice to say, it came off as something of a anticlimax, and then the guy with white feathery wings more or less the same size as Ben's flew out and once again all was right with the world. The bald man in the wheelchair took his right hand off the controls as Reed approached his mode of conveyance. "Professor X? A pleasure to meat you at last." "Likewise Reed Richards."

--

The man who had decided to that henceforth he should only be known as the Wingless Wizard examined his two current motley compatriots. Peter Petraskey also known as the Trapster was brilliant (though no where near as brilliant as the wizard himself) chemist who had once made quite a name for himself in adhesives.

The Sandman on the other hand was nothing more then a run of the mill theif who had gained incredible powers by accident. It galled Wizard to work with such a man, but his incredible abilities to transform himself into sand and be as ever present as a dust storm or as hard as concrete made him too valuable a resources to simply turn up his nose at.

He was also unsurpringly the first to voice his dissatisfaction with his leader's plan. "Seems like way more trouble then it's trouble then it's worth, trying to take on the Fantastic Four in their on their own home turf."

Wizard scowled the Sandman as the base fool filled the room with the scent of his smouldering cigar. "Sooner or later we will have to deal withe Fantastic Four, better we do so with on our terms then upon their's. More to the point, once we have dealt with them once they will never bother us again, and the Baxter Building and all it's treasures will be ours. The equipment within alone would fetch several fortunes on the blackmarket, besides, Richards and his companions are short sighted enough to believe that he could create a defence system for his building that I could not outwit, hah!

It was be child's play to compose such a plan once I'd obtained the blueprints for his building. To start with its sensors will prove utterly incapable of detecting a ship that is powered by my antigravity technoligy. Of course any kind of forced entry, even so much as breaking a single window, or putting so much as an unexpected fifty pounds upon the rooftop would trigger countless alarms. But that is no reason to be disheartened since Sandman will be able to slip in through even the very smallest of cracks and then simply open up a window for us to enter through. At which point we need only divide and conquer the members of the Fantastic Four."

Sadly one of the key elements of this plan still seemed remarkably unwilling to preform his task. "There's no way I'll be able to pull it off Wiz. You know what the winds are like up that high? If I split myself up different parts of me will get blown across different state lines!"

Wizard simply smirked at the very idea that there might be a part of his plan he hadn't already thought through. "Well you will not have to attempt this particular feat alone Sandman. After all, we will be known as the Frightful Four, and not the Fright Three, and so it is with great pleasure that I introduce the final member of our quartet. You may rest assured that she is even more powerful and deadly then Ultra Woman herself!"

"Is she also more pre..." Trapster got no father before the Wizard shoved a gloved hand across his mouth silencing him. "I would suggest you refrain from pointless mockeries Trapster, she is not the kind of woman who suffers such with a smile." Now then, allow me to introduce Madame Medusa..." A well built woman walked into the room. Her green eyes had a catlike quality about them, and her mane of red hair gloriously cascaded down the back of her body, stopping just shy of her ankles.

She wore a full body purple outfit that involved a belt that was a slightly redder shade then the rest of her outfit and had a stylized "M" embroidered in the middle of it. She wore a simple black mask that hid the upper portions of her face, and she needed to only sniff the room once before she acted. Several strands hair suddenly rose up, shifting about before her, and began to rotate themselves in a rapid circle like a living propeller.

By the time she was done with that particular trick Sandman's cigar had been quite forcefully extinguished. "I owe you a great debt Wizard, but I see now reason to endure hardships for the sole sake of other's enjoyment while I repay it." There was a detectable French accent to Medusa's words, but it was hardly present to such a degree as to hamper communication. Sandman staired down his nose at his unlit cigar for a moment before looking Medusa over from the top to bottom of her hair, since this range also contained at least 90 of her body.

"Not bad at all, you know I happen to like dames who play rough." Another strand of Medusa's hair flicked the unlit cigar from his mouth. "And I would like to see the Wizard's plan over and done with so that we need not waste another moment contemplating it."

--

From there it turned into something of an impromptu party more or less. Reed and his opposite number more or less exchanged notes on their experiences both as psychics (though Reed was obviously on the weaker end of that particular spectrum) leaders of a team of superheroes.

For her part Susan usurpingly found herself reclining languidly on one of the Baxter Building's many couches conversing with the one superheroine among their guests. Marvel Girl was an attractive woman (well Susan couldn't see her face beneath the black mask she was wearing, but what she could see wasn't anything to be ashamed of) who seemed to be more or less about Susan's age with green eyes, and shoulder length red hair.

She also had telepathy and telekinesis that was slightly more powerful then Reed's, though she lacked his incredible intelligence. "So Marvel Girl I couldn't help but overhear some of my husband's conversation with your professor, what exactly is the difference between a mutant and a mutate?"

The section of Marvel Girl's face that could be seen around the her mask reddened. "You can call me Jean if you want, I was at your wedding." Susan blushed herself slightly. "Okay Jean sorry I didn't reocgnize you but it seemed like my husband invited just about every superhero in the city if not the state, if not the nation if not the, well you get the idea."

Jean waved her comment off, while Susan was lounging on her side along a couch she was simply sitting in a chair, but then Jean wasn't currently a mother to be. "It was your wedding, who reckonizes the faces of each and every single one of their guests, especially when so many of them were wearing masks? Anyway, the difference between the two terms is pretty simple, at least when used to describe the origin of someone's superpowers.

A mutate is a phrase that could be used to describe you or any other member of the Fantastic Four. It means that someone experienced some particular key event that was responsible for them gaining powers. In your case it was obliviously the exposure to cosmic rays during your flight into space. On the other hand, mutants like every member of the X-Men, while our powers may manifest at some moment of extreme stress, they've actually been encoded in our genetic structure from birth."

Susan winced. "So it just happens?" Jean nodded and Susan winced to an even greater degree. "That can't be fun at all. I mean yeah it was a lot to go through in one day: first thinking I was going to be the first woman to set foot on the moon, then worrying if I'd ever make it back to the earth alive, followed by discovering I had superpowers, but at least it was a chain of logical events that I could understand.

If I just woke up one morning, stretched, and found my arms growing longer and longer till they fell off on either side of the bed and not having a clue why... I'm pretty sure that would have promptly lead to me freaking out so badly that my head would have slammed against the ceiling."

Jean held out her right hand and a book flew to it, then she flipped it up into the air. For a few moments it just spun randomly but then it stopped, and proceeded to slide gracefully back into the bookcase it had come from. "Yeah. I thought was going crazy for a while, because I was hearing voices in my head, seeing things move for no reason, but luckily before I wound up committed I met the Professor who explained to me that I was a telapath and those voices were other people's thoughts.

That's a lot of what we do when we're not stopping mutants who want to use their powers to gain and advantage over those who don't have them, the Professor helps us track down mutants and we offer our services to help teach them how to use their powers."

Susan rolled her eyes and managed a weak smile. "I guess that makes it officially a triple ouch. I usually spend most of my days just lazing around the Baxter Building, do a couple light domestic chores, reading a few books, mainly on how to deal with pregnency and child rearing, pine over my husband, and otherwise being a big blue lump on whatever piece of furniture I care to relax in." "Well you are pregnant."

Jean said it with a slight giggle in her voice as if there was something inappropriate about it, but then arguably considering how I had happened... Either way, Susan took a moment to elongate her neck and carefully inspected her belly before responding. "Yep, all the smart money is on I'm pregnant." She left her neck elongated, and twisted it around, so that she once again was looking at Jean.

"Well I guess once I actually give birth to these six I'll have my elastic hands pretty full,but I'm still glad I'll only have to worry about my own super powered children." Jean shrugged carefully pushing one of her red bangs out of her face. "Well most of the 'kids' are at least in their teens, that seems to be the most frequent age for mutants to develop their powers.

That said, you do have very nice home." Susan shrugged her shoulders, elongating them a little for effect. "Well like you probably know, all four of us got our powers at the same time and we were more or less standing right next to each other at the time, so the entire forming a superhero team was a pretty obvious course of action.

Being able to pull one together from people who'd never known each other before, that must have taken some doing." Jean stood up and nodded as she to preform some minor stretches, evidently not feeling like she could sit still any longer. "Yeah even though the Professor is clearly in charge, since he rather obviously can't follow us into the field there was a certain amount of jockeying for position between us for who would be second in command.

But we've mostly worked that stuff out by now, even if it took a while. So what's it like, being pregnant I mean?" Susan rose from laying on her side to sitting up with her belly resting on her legs. "Well just like with just about everything, superpowers help. I might spend a lot of my time just laying around, but that's more because I don't have anything to do then lacking the energy to do it. Why do you ask?"

Jean blushed again and gave a sly smile. "Well I'd be lying if I said that I don't have my eyes on a certain someone, and I think he likes me to, but we're both still working out how serious it is. Not to mention even if we did get into a relationship, considering what kind of world it would mean bringing kids into.."

Susan stretched out an arm putting it on Jean's shoulder. "As I see it, if we ever let the villains we deal with frighten us enough that we doubt we'll be able to keep our children safe, or wonder if its worth bringing children into the world, then we're letting them win by default."

Jean just sat there for a moment, and then her smile became much more genuine. "Good point." Susan nodded as she retracted her arm back to its normal length. "It's a story that's basically old as history itself. I'm no match for my husband mentally, but I'm not exactly a dim bulb and I know a little history myself.

The soldiers who fought in World War Two saw humanity unveiling countless new weapons, including for the first time the possibility of wiping out all life on earth go from being bad science fiction to horrifying science fact. But it didn't make them loose their faith in humanity and wonder if it was worth having children. Quite the opposite in fact, it was called the Baby Boom for a reason after all.

Truth be told, that's sort of what happened with me and Reed. After putting up with half a year of having the man I love be nothing but a living brain, when he finally got a new body, well bing, bang, boom, and then this happened." It was then that Jean asked the question that Susan had been expecting for quite a while. "Do you mind if I feel?" Susan licked her lips and smiled. "Okay. But bare in that they're my unborn children, not a bunch of circus animals, they don't give schedualed preformances."

--

Eventually things wrapped themselves up without a fight breaking out between the two groups, despite what Johnny's comicbook collection had to say on the issue, the entire meeting managed to take place without a fight breaking out between the two groups. The closest they came was Ben managing to goad Angel (the winged member of the X-Men) into a quick race to see who was faster in the air. Ben won that particular constant by considerable margin and was noticeably proud of it to. "Was barely a contest, my turns were way tighter, but then something tells me that guy pulled an eight G turn in his life."

--

Wizard smiled as he watched the Baxter Building's roof through a pair of high tech binoculars. "Excellent. Look our foes already divide themselves for us. Mandroid has departed as have their superpowered guests. Let us board my ship and make haste!"

--

Ben Grimm sighed as he closed the door to his room behind him. It'd been a long day, and he was ready to hit the sack. Except that something was slightly off. He always left his window at least slightly open because Reed had to have a fancy mechnical locking system of the old fasion twist, untwist, so it was just easier leave it slightly open so that it could be slid fully open any time he wanted to take flight out of it.

But Ben was pretty sure he only left it wide open when he was out and intended to return to the Baxter Building through his window. So what was it doing wide open as he walked into the room? Deciding that trying to figure out how it happened was more trouble then it was worth, he walked over, intending to lower it before calling it a night.

Except that as he pressed his hands to the window he suddenly found himself starring down the barrel of a very oddly shaped gun, then everything went orange.

--

Dragonfly suitably dealt with, Medusa swung Trapster in through the window that was easily large enough for a person to fit through. Sandman reformed himself from the pile of sand that he'd turned into underneath the bed, and Wizard casually floated in through the window. He then proceeded to give Dragonfly a quick blast from a small green bottle he was carrying which ended Dragonfly's fruitless struggles against Trapster's paste.

"Excellent, excellent. Trapster apply enough of you solvent to Dragonfly's bonds that we can move him about easily. With him dealt with all that remains is Ultra Woman, and Mr. Fantastic. Sandman, you and Trapster will accompany me as we move towards Richards' lab to search for him, Medusa you check to see if they've retired to their rooms. If you find them you know what do don't you?"

As Trapster applied the solvent to his paste Dragonfly fell to the ground, even though his body his arms, legs, and wings were still pasted together. Medusa for her part began to wrap several strands of hair around his unconscious body, while another strand lifted up a green can that was the twin to the one the Wizard had just used. "Of course."

--

"It's fascinating isn't it Susan, just like I surmised it would appear that evolution is in fact being pushed into overdrive. Humans developing extordinary abilities for no apparently reason at all. I wonder, if I compare our, well mine are rather worthless for obvious reasons, but if I compared any of your three's genetic structures before and after the accident, would I be able to pinpoint the exact genes which are responsible for our average humans developing such powers?"

They'd seen the last of the X-men but Reed was still fully dressed in his armor, and in response to his question Susan began to twist her upper body around his. "Yeah, that's interesting, but I can think of some more interesting things that we could do in your lab tonight." Reed teasingly pressed a finger to her nose. "I suppose you do raise a valid point.

"There they are, get them!" Susan and Reed suddenly found themselves face to face with three men who she had never seen before and that cry was the only warning she got before some strange contraption one of the man held let loose with a torrent of orangeish gunk.

If she'd been more on the ball then Susan probably would have been able to curl herself into one in time to avoid the blast, but she was taken totally by surprise, and barely maanged to return to normal before she got hit. The stuff felt like it weighed a couple hundred pounds and pushed her to the floor even as she was still trying to come to grips with what had happened to her. From her less then perfect vantage point she was able to see that apperently Reed had gotten nailed by plenty of the stuff as well.

"Struggle all you like doll, your not getting out, the my paste could anchor a battleship!" Attacking without balre any warning, derogatroy female pronoun, it seemed like a fairly safe bet that she was dealing with supervillians. "Well then its a good thing I'm not a lot more flexible then a battleship!"

The paste was covered her body between her breasts and neck, and there was some on her arms, but not nearly enough to imobilize them. She easily elongated her fists sending them on a collision course with the man's face. His eyes went wide and he tired to stop her arms with another blast of paste, but Susan just smirked as she saw the orange muck start to emerge from his weapon.

Now that she was aware of what was going on, Susan was easily able to manuever her arms out of the paste's way and then have them finish their journey to the man's face from a slightly different angle. The villain in a red and orange outfit was knocked backwards and off his feet.

Another one of the villains dressed in some kind of purple suit of armor suddenly lifted off the ground and as he flew past Susan's arms he slapped a pair of small objects to them before she could use them to get a grip on him. All of a sudden, Susan's arms went haywire, stretching themselves in each and every direction regardless of what she tried to do with them. "Sandman finish her!"

All of a sudden Reed took a single step forward, the mass of orange that had apparently been stuck to him sliding right off. He raised his hands and fired a pair of concussion beam blasts. Meanwhile the other villain (Sandman apparently) began to transform his body into some kind of mass of sand in the vague shape of a human body.

Before he could do anything to Reed, Susan decided to make use of the limbs she still had control of, extending her legs and delivering a pair of kicks to Sandman that reduced him to a pile of only slightly shifting dust. "Your shields might have been able prevent Trapster's paste from setting on your armor, but your aim is truly pitiful Richards!"

Even from her position of being stuck to the floor Susan smiled. Mainly because with that kind of perfect timing that you only see when irony is involved, a section of the roof caved in on top of the the villian in purple. "I'm not sure of how much protection that armor provides you so I decided to take a more esoteric approach to subduing you. Now then Susan, why don't you and I see our last guest out?"

Sandman was started to reform, but Susan had plenty of blows left in her body. But then all of a sudden something grabbed Susan's neck and yanked her backwards. She found herself face to face with a woman with lots of red hair green eyes and she was holding a grey spray can in her right hand.

She emptied it's contense into Susan's face, and instantly the world went fuzzy. "Fair well Ultra Woman." Whatever was holding Susan's neck let go of it and it fell limply to the ground. "Dam it... feel like James Bond's girlfriend... if I'm an amoeba... need to stop breathing... through my mouth... won't be vulnerable to... damn knockout gas..." Then she closed her eyes and there was darkness.

--

Johnny really wasn't sure where exactly he was going. All he knew was that he didn't want to spend another night as the only guy in the Baxter Building who didn't have a steady girl.

On paper it certainly sounded like a much easier task then saving the world several times over, after all he'd had to deal with an inordinate number of guys how found themselves sexually... an inordinate number of guys who in various ways said through either words or actions that his sister was an incredibly beautiful woman. He'd climbed out of the exact same gene pool as her, so clearly it wasn't just imaging himself as hansom when he saw his reflection.

More to the point, as a founding member of the Fantastic Four he was 25 of ROLLING IN IT when it came to finances. Yes to all appearances Susan loved Reed for his brain more then his money, but that didn't mean Johnny had to.

He ran through the checklist again, he was hansom, rich, famous, and he had discovered that being a superhero gave you access to a veritable flood of pickup lines. So why the hell was he did he find himself listening to Ben make jokes about how he was "jacking in" to the building's power grid to recharge his batteries alone in his room ever night?

Well there was the problem in and of itself. All the chicks he ran into who were only interested in a guy's body wanted him to introduce them to Ben, and all the chicks he ran into who were only interested in a guy's brain wanted him to introduce them to Reed. How the heck was he suppose to have a chance to score with competition like that?

Well, now that Reed and Susan were finally married with any luck he'd stop having moon eyed girls come up to him and ask him if he really did know Mr. Fantastic. /Johnny get back to the Baxter Building, on the double! We're under attack on the third floor from the top, I'd say more but Susan need's my help!\ Johnny jammed his foot down hard on the break the moment he felt the psychic conversation stating, luckily there hadn't been anyone following him close behind him, so he avoided creating an accident that way.

Once he fully felt in control of his body again, he sighed, if it wasn't his own team mates it was supervillians, apparently it was gonna take a miracle for him to be able to land a girl. He carefully looked both ways, and then eased his car into a thoroughly illegal U turn.

He really needed to talk to Reed about letting him get some kind of "superhero" bumpersticker on his car that would let him basically do all the kind of stuff cops did when they were in were involved in what could quickly turn into life or death situations.

But for the moment, the illegality of what he had just done, and what he was about to do came secondary compared to the fact that he could actually do it. He transformed from Jonathan Storm to the Mandroid, flipped up a small hidden compartment in the dashboard and pressed the little red button beneath it. That button was one of the few victories he'd been able to win, but he had convinced Reed to give some of his cars pretty heavy modification in case of situations more or less just like this one.

His car went from zero to two hundred MPH and rising n the space of a couple of seconds, that kind of thing could be a big enough burden on machinery, and would have been even less fun if he'd had human flesh at the time. He carefully inched a finger forward and openned another hidden compartment revealing a blue button that would release his cars drag chutes. He'd need to be pressing that one fairly soon since he doubted Reed would look kindly on him ramming one of his cars into the Baxter Building even if it was in the line of duty.

--

Ideas raced through Reed's mind like cars through an intersection, and not a single one of the could help him now. It would have been so very easy to build a way to remotely activate the Baxter Building's security measures into his armor. So very easy to do, and he hadn't done it.

After Susan had suddenly been knocked out the Sandman had turned into a swirling vortex and come at him. His shielding systems were set for a certain defined size, after all if it was a perfectly air tight barrier then he'd need to build an internal air supply. which was another wonderful idea that he might never get a chance to implement.

Countless tiny particles of sand had been able to flow through his shield and right now they were currently irritating his lungs and throat, choking him. How utterly ironic, Doom had claimed that his shielding would be able to withstand an atomic blast, and while wearing it Reed was going to be taken down by a numbers that even he couldn't counter an avalanche of dustmites jamming themselves down his throat.

It hurt to breath and darkness was creeping into the corners of his eyes. Try as he might he could not cough his throat clear enough to draw in oxygen or speak words. But then there was a strange serenity as he realized he didn't have to. Leading up to, on the day of the wedding and the week after he'd already let Susan know everything he'd wanted to tell her.

No, not everything, he could have praised Susan St... Susan Richard's beauty a different way for decades on end, for centuries if he'd had the time. But apparently he didn't... he might never get to see her give birth, might never get to see or know his children... funny he finally understood... just what she meant when she'd told him... she didn't want to give up the possibility of... things that might yet be... Reed didn't either... But sadly as he already knew to well, even among all of the machina that augmented his armor there was no suitable method for delivering dues to this situation. Consciousness slipped from his grasp.

--

"Excellent, the Fantastic Four are defeated!" Sandman reformed himself into his normal human appearance and held up every finger on his right hand except his pinkie. "You know for a guy who's supposedly so smart Wizzy, you don't seem to be very good at counting. I only see three of them, which mean the Mandroid is still out there somewhere."

Medusa felt her hair starting to probe around the room's corners, checking every nook and carnny outside of her vision, as if expecting to feel strands of it brush up against cold metallic flesh at any moment. The Wizard meanwhile simply landed on the ground and laughed. "Sandman, do I look like some pompous over bearing fictional villain to you? Yes the Mandroid is still out there, but there is not one single reason that he should ever be given so much as a chance to see his comrades again, unless it is as the last thing he does before he expires."

Three small antigrav discs slid into the Wizard's right palm and he tossed one to each of them, Medusa catching hers with a strand of her hair. "Attach these to our defeated foes and Trapster you will secure them in place. Sandman, you will smash a hole in this room large enough for us to shove them out, and Medusa you will use your hair to see that they are pushed through it. By the time these three awaken, if they ever do, they will discover themselves leaving earth's atmosphere for a second time, curtesy of my discs! Then, it will simply be a matter of weather they die from asphyxiation, hypothermia, or any of the countless other was that the human body is bound to perish if it departs this world unprotected!"

Sandman slapped the disc to Mr. Fantastic armor, and it was accompanied by a slight magnetic "clink" indicating that even without the paste it was unlikely to come lose on its own. For the first time it seemed like a genuine smile was one his lips. "You know that's the first part of this plan I've heard that I can fully get behind. Once we've sent these three on their final voyage Mandroid will have no chance at all against the full might of the Frightful Four! Ain't I right?" Trapster pasted his disc into place on Dragonfly's body in silence though he nodded firmly at Sandman's words.

Medusa brought the antigravity disk she held in her hair closer to her looking down at Ultra Woman's body. Even after being forced into an unnatural sleep her body still remained strewn about the room, yet was a certain part of her body that seemed quite naturally dispended even if to a somewhat greater degree then normal. Looking at it closely it might have just been her eyes playing tricks wit her, but she was sure she spied some movements within it.

Wizard touched the master antigrav disc he wore on his belt, and the two fallen male members of the Fantastic Four rose up into the air. Medusa could feel the disc in her hair starting to tug against it in a desire to rise upwards as well.

"What are you waiting for Medusa?" She turned back to look at her three companions, thought for only a single moment, and then smiled. "Nothing." Her hair winded up and tossed the antigrav disc. Several more strands of her hair easily snatched Trapster's paste gun from his surprised hands. She twisted it in and fired. The stream of paste arrived only a few moments after the antigrav disc landed right in the middle of Sandman's chest, and the glob of orangish adhesive should do a magnificent job of keeping it there, and keeping him off balance, that made one.

She twisted the gun around and didn't just press the trigger, she yanked it down. The Trapster was neatly hoisted upon his own petard as what had to be close to a gallon of his own sticky mixture secured him to the floor. He had a solvent on him for it somewhere, but she doubted he'd be able to reach it in his current condition. Just to be sure however she gave the gun a quick yank, snapping the chord connecting it to the Trapster's backpack, creating a leak which would only further burry him within his own chemical concoction. That made two.

Her red hair lashed out like dozen of angry fists, each one craving a chance to wrap itself firmly around some portion of Wizard's body. But three was not going to be an easy number to achieve, while Medusa had been subduing her other two former confederates the Wizard had rengaged his suits own antigravity systems, and somehow he managed to carefully manuver between all of the strands of Medusa's hair.

"Traitorous wench!" He threw handfuls of antigravity discs at her, but she stood her ground against the assult, her hair had no trouble at all hitting targets which didn't change their course every other second, and each and every single one of the discs was struck by a strand of her hair and sent spinning off on another course away from Medusa.

He fired blasts of energy from his gloves, but Medusa managed to duck, weave, jump, and otherwise avoid them. Then she hit upon an idea, instantly implemented it. With the paste still securing it disc to his chest Sandman was careening helplessly about the room between the two combatants, at least until a strand of Medusa's hair seized him and hurled him at his master.

Just as she had hoped Wizard was too busy avoiding her torrent of crimson tendrils to see this particular attack coming and their bodies careened into one another. "Dam it, deactivate this thing so I can show this girl who's boss Wizard!" Medusa's hair tendrils quickly encircled their two bodies in a cacoon, however as it turned out she was going to need to start counting backwards. Through numerous tiny cracks between the strands of her hair grains of sand began to spill with an alarming speed.

Sure enough it didn't take long before Sandman had managed to reform himself. "All right Medusa, let's see how you like a guy who plays rough!" He formed a giant fist made of sand and swung it at her with reckless abandon. Medusa had spent just about every second of her life that she could remember using her hair to get the better of those who had either greater strength of numbers on their side, and brute strength itself wasn't much harder to counter. She wrapped her hair around the fist before it could connect, seeking not to alter it's course, but use it to alter her own.

With that firm fist to pull down on, Medusa's hair pulled her into the air, allowing Sandman's blow to pass through empty air. Then she launched her own counter attack, send her red locks lashing into Sandman's midsection like living whips. Sure enough his midsection more or less exploded in a shower of sand under the force that assailed it. Then Medusa hooked another handful of her hairs through the hole in her foes body and used that leverage to hurl him across the room. He transformed himself into a swirling vortex before he connected but Medusa knew just how to deal with that.

Before she could however, she suddenly gritted her teeth in pain as Wizard's gauntlets blew a man sized hole i the cacoon of hair that had been restraining him, and he promptly flew out through it. One of her (even if she had hundreds of tendrils of hair at her command) against two of them, those were not odds she liked to think about, but it was too late to do anything but press on. Besides, at worse all they could do was kill her, and death seemed like a rather pale deterrent to someone who was living her life.

--

Elevator music. There where times when Johnny Storm seriously fantasized about putting his brother in law in a headlock and asking him what the hell he had been thinking, and at the moment he had way more time then he needed to do just that.

Ben would have flown up, his sister would have stretched, Reed had his own private jet pack. But Jonathan Spencer Storm the Mandroid, when he heard that the rest of the Fantastic Four was engaged in fight for their lives near the top floor of the Baxter Building, what did he do? He took the elevator.

The elevator that was currently playing run of the mill, everyday, slow, how much more this can I take before I need to smash either my skull or the speaker in, elevator music. Johnny would even be willing to compromise with Reed when they talked on the subject (he hopped like hell they would have a chance to talk on the subject) it didn't have to be something loud modern and flashy, it could be Ride of the Valkeries.

But making him listen to the stuff that the Baxter Building's elevators was currently pumping out wasn't so much working his last nerve, as snipping it like a pair of pliers. He would have shut it off, but he was busy using his innate empathy with electronic devices to try and make the elevator he was ridding in move as fast as mechanically possible. Which was another thing he'd need to talk to Reed about (please, please, give him a chance to get board out of his mind by Reed's voice and freaked out by his sister's pregnant figure) that. If a guy could do all the other stuff he did, making an elevator that didn't make him wonder if climbing the building might have been a better idea shouldn't be too much to ask.

Luckily it was at that moment that with an annoyingly chipper "ding" the doors finally opened giving him first class view of the fight that was still taking place within the Baxter Building. Unfortunately he didn't have a single clue what side he was suppose to be on at first, since the other three members of the Fantastic Four were currently out cold.

Luckily the problem resolved itself fairly quickly, on one side, one attractive woman with really long red, on the other two guys both of whom he recognized pretty quickly form the description's he'd gotten of them while comparing foes with other guests at Reed and Sue's wedding, the Sandman and the Wizard.

Unfortunately the woman who had up to this point been managing to keep her two opponents off guard using said long red tresses in ways he doubted even his sisters elastic hair was capable of, suddenly froze in shock at the sight of Johnny. One of the Wizard's antigravity discs hit her right between the breasts, and she impacted against the ceiling with an extremely painful sounding "WHAM!"

She continuned to struggle but the Wizard made a few quick twists on his outfit which was probably loaded with at least as many tricks as Reed's and both the woman her hair were pinned to the ceiling with what looked like almost bone crushing force.

Luckily the two had their back's to Johnny and no clue about why their luck was about to take another unexpected turn. After pinning the woman to the ceiling the Wizard had stopped zipping around the room like a humming bird, that was a choice he was going to regret.

He spun around as he heard the sound of Johnny's metal feet on the floor, but he was just a couple moments too late as Johnny wrapped his hands firmly around the floating criminal's leg. The Wizard tired to amp up the power to his antigravity suit to shake Johnny lose, but he was one step behind the Mandroid.

Johnny might not have a single clue exactly how the particular energy Wizard used to power his antigravity devices worked, but it just so happened that he didn't need to know in order to syphon every single ounce of it out of that whacky looking purple suit one drop at a time so long as he could maintain physical contact.

As gravity joined Johnny in having a good grip on his opponent, he decided proceeded to deal with Wizard in the simplest way he could think of, he yanked him down on to the ground and punched him in the face. He'd spent a fair amount of time in Reed's lab (at its owners behest, though in retrospect Johnny was very thankful for it) working with machines that measured how much force was being applied to them.

That pratice helped him know just how hard to hit if he wanted to break someone's nose, knock its owner out cold, and probably give him a concussion to boot, but not actually shatter his skull, however attractive that idea was. Unfortauntly just as he had taken one of the two superivllians out of the fight, Johnny recieved a hammer blow of his own. It sent him sprawling, and left him lying on the ground looking up at Sandman about to hit him again with what had certainty felt like a giant block of concrete.

"Nice try kid, but now it is just you and me, and it doesn't matter how hard you hit, it doesn't hurt me at all." Johnny knew he was right, luckily he had more to work with then just his fists (great he hadn't even been Reed Richards' brother in law for a month and yet he was already starting to think like him) in fact quite a lot more. Johnny rolled out of the way as the giant fist came slamming down, and took off running away from the Sandman, which just like he expected ended in him taking another blow to his back that sent him sprawling up against another wall.

Johnny patted that wall and smiled as Sandman approached him before rising to his feet. "You really wana go a third round? Fine. This job's gone crazy enough already I could use a good punching bag." "Well so could I." Johnny adjusted his stance slightly and even as Sandman came at him, Mandroid smashed through the wall he had been leaning against. Sandman couldn't stop himself fast enough and so he ended up running out through the Baxter Building's newest emergency exit leaving the two of them a long way up with nothing but air between them and the ground. "Big deal, when we hit the pavement you're gonna break like a cheap watch and I'll pull myself back together in no time." "Neither of us are gonna hit the ground..."

Johnny harnessed the antigravity energy he'd drained from his previous opponent and used it to fire himself upwards back towards the Baxter Building like a silver bullet. He smashed through Sandman reducing him to an oversized dust cloud, before rentering the room he'd just left through another hole in the wall that he was sure he'd hear a complaints about from his teamates in the not to distant future.

But what was more important was that as he slowly turned around he saw that just like he'd hopped, even though he was trying to pull himself together Sandman was fighting a losing battle with mother nature. Spiderman claimed that he'd been able to defeat him with nothing more then a high suction vacuum cleaner, well when he finally managed to pull himself together (hopefully not any time soon) Sandman would be able to claim he'd been sucked and blown.

Johnny drew in a very deep breath clearly it was time to take his thinking helmet off before he ended up overclocking his system to a dangerous degree. After all, there was only one thing left to do. He walked directly underneath the red haired woman and released the last of the antigravity energy he'd managed to syphon to rise a few feet into the air, and carefully plucked the disc stuck to her body from its resting place without copping a feel, however easily he could have.

The two dropped to the floor at more or less the same moment, but luckily the floor managed to support Johnny's weight (since two more holes in the Baxter Building which he was responsible for was exactly what he needed at the moment) at which point Johnny allowed a genuine smile to slid across his face. "So what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

The woman's hair pressed against his hands and she more or less vaulted right out of his hands to land on her own to feet. "What I must do, leaving." Several strands of her hair began to work their way towards the holes that Johnny had made in the wall, as if she meant to just climb down the Baxter Building.

For all he knew she might be able to pull it off, but he had absolutely no intention of letting a beautiful redhead walk, swing, fly, or climb right on out of his life after having that romantic a first meeting. "Listen, if you've got some place important to be, fine. But you could at least tell me your name and explain why you have to leave? We are superheroes after all, when people have problems we help them.

--

"So you're saying we got attacked by the guys how might be our greatest foes yet, and I slept through the entire thing? What a revoltin' development." Reed shook his head, the Fantastic Four were gathered in his lab to compare notes over what had happened. "I think it is safe to say that the Frightful Four won't be much of a menace to us or anyone else for quite a while. Sandman will need a considerable amount of time to pull himself back together, Wizard and Trapster both derive their 'powers' completely from the devices they've designed, so I keeping htem contained should be no great challange.

Which just leaves Medusa." Ben turned his glare towards the subject of the conversation. "Yeah, so what exactly are we going to do with this carrot topped crook?" Johnny was in his human form for the moment but planted his hands firmly on his hips all the same. "Hey, she was also responsible for taking out Trapster, and keeping Wizard and Sandman busy till I arrived. If it wasn't for her, that probably would have been the last nap of your life."

Medusa was being very careful to keep all her hair close to her body, though considering how quickly it could move that was worth about as much as seeing htat a cat currently had its claws sheathed. "No Jonathan, Dragonfly is right, I did come here with he intention of doing you four harm." Susan was sitting by Reed, though she started to extend her neck so that she could get a closer look at Medusa's eyes. "Well why don't you just tell us why you changed your mind? After we've heard that then we start debating what we're going to do with you?"

A single strand of Medusa's hair began to work its way towards Susan, but it pulled back just as quickly. "You did Ultra Woman. My epxliantion starts at the beggining of everything I can remember. You see I found myself in Paris, and absolutely no idea how I'd gotten there.

Because I couldn't hide my hair, I couldn't fit in. I'd tried cutting it a few times, but it always grew back too fast, and pretty soon I'd wind up ankle deep in strands of my hair without achieving anything. Anyway, I soon realized that even if my hair made me a pariah, it also made me a very effective thief. But eventually I drew more attention from the authorities than I could handle, at which point the Wizard stepped in and rescued me.

So when he asked me to join the Frightful Four, I readily agreed, even if it meant going from a simple thief to a supervillian But when we'd managed to defeat three of you and I was catching my breath, I realized that even if I thought I was ready to kill people in cold blood, there was no way that I was ready to kill a pregnant woman.

I have no idea who I used to be, what I used to do, and where I got in my powers, but I swore for a moment I could remember just enough to know who I used to be wouldn't have ever even considered doing something like that. So I decided it was better to turn my back on my current allies then whoever I used to be." Ben gently nudged Reed with one of his wings. "Just to make sure we aren't getting taken advantage of by some gal with a sob story who the Johinynator fell for, can you poke around what's underneath all that hair?"

Reed coughed slightly and stood up. "Medusa I don't want to read your mind if your not comfortable with the idea, so can I ..?" Several strands of Medusa's hair twitched slightly, but she nodded firmly. "Of corse. If it could possibly help me get my memory back, so much the better." Reed focused, and the others just waited around preforming various slight tics of irritation and bordem as the time passed, until finally Reed was finished and sank back into his seat.

"She's telling the truth. There's a portion of her memory that's disconnected from the rest of her mind, but what she can remember is perfectly in line with what she told us. The good news is that this disconnect doesn't seem to be cause by any sort of physical damage, the memories should naturally come back on their own, though weather it will be a particular event or just the passage of time that does the trick even I can't say.

The bad news is that I am in no way have enough confidence in my mental powers to try and use them to fix your mind with them Medusa, I'd doubtlessly end up doing more harm then good." Johnny particularly jumped for joy at this announcement. "So can we keep her?"

Susan for a moment considered slapping her brother with an extra large hand. "Johnny, she's a human being, not a pet! She's not our or anyone else's to 'keep' on a whim. That said, I'd feel like a royal heel if we didn't at least try to repay her helping us when it really counted."

Reed nodded as well. "Considering that she seems to be more a victim of circumstance then anything else, it would probably be for the best of everyone involved if we provided her with a place to stay for now. However I'd like to make two requests: a lock of your hair and a blood sample." Susan pretended to fume slightly. "Those had better both be for research husband of mine." "Of course dear."

Ben looked around the room and then shrugged. "Hell far be it for me to be the guy who rains on everybody's parade when I don't know this girl from Eve." Reed nodded firmly took off one of his gauntlets, reached into one the many drawers of the desk he was sitting at and pulled out a seringe. "Excellent. Medusa would you mind rolling up one of your sleaves? This shouldn't take very long..."

Sure enough she used her hair to roll up her right sleave, and even wrapped a few strands of it around her arm to make her veins stand out more clearly. Susan couldn't help but notice her brother pointedly looked away and he didn't looking back until Reed was finished affixing an adhesive strip the minuscule puncture mark he'd made in her skin.

Then after carefully placing the seringe in a holder so that he wouldn't lose track of it, he reached out and yanked one of Medusa's hairs free. Sure enough, it seemed hydra like no sooner had it been removed then a new one sprung into being to take its place. Though more interesting was the look on the owner of that hair's face.

It'd been a long time since Susan had been able to pull off a strand of her hair, but she doubted doing it had ever made her eyes water. "Fascinating. I'm sorry, I should have been more gentle, obviously in addition to the normal protein chians that make up human hair your's must obviously contain some kind of nervious system. It'd be the only logicaly way for you to manipulate them, but it would also make having them handled harshly every bit as painful as our other appendages, though I suppose that's water under the bridge.

You three can show Medusa around the Baxter Building. Don't count on me showing up for dinner, something tells me I'm not going to be leaving my lab for a while." Susan coiled her body around Reed's chair. "Well then something tells me I just might be spending the night in here as well."

Ben looked a Reed and Susan, looked at Johnny and Medusa and sighed. "Love, can't fight it so you might as well live with it. I'm off to Alica's, if any more supervillians show up, try telling em we've already had our quota for the day, if that doesn't work you know how to reach me."

Ben flapped his wings a couple times and then took off through the labs door with Johnny and Medusa following at a much more sedate pace. As the door slammed shut Reed turned to face the room's one remaining occupant. "You realize that..." Susan cut him off before he could finish. "Yeah I know. You've got that look about you like a kid in a candy store.

You get work analyzing you two new toys, I'll just hang around and be ready to provide moral support or sweet elastic loving, until the need for one of those two arises, I do believe I hear a certain hotrock calling my name."

Even her bulging belly did precious little to slow down the speed with which Susan stretched across the room and began to entwine herself around the gift that kept on giving. Reed watched her, though his hands were all but pleading with him to get down to work. "Comfortable?"

Susan finished arranging herself and nodded. "It's not as good as you, it's not even a close second, but it makes for one dam enjoyable third." Reed nodded, spun his chair around, his mind already racing own lists of all the various tests he'd need to subject his new samples to.

--

"So you can basically stay wherever you like, hell if I know why Reed decided our headquarters should have enough rooms to house the Fantastic Forty, but I suppose between you and the kids my sister has on the way we'll be letting less of it go to waste."

Medusa nodded as she looked at the sparse room, her hair continuing to flicker up and down almost like an ocean tide. "Thank you Jonathan, you don't know who much having a place to call my own means to me." Johnny just shrugged, being a superhero gave you plenty of experience dealing with people who were near constantly singing your praises.

"Don't thank me, it's my brother in law's building and you did all the hard work that got you hear. That said, only my sister calls me 'Jonathan', and she only does that when she's pissed at me for some reason or another. You can call me Johnny like everyone else." Medusa's lip quivered for a moment as if she was afraid of this show of familiarity but then she nodded.

"All right Johnny. By the way, I didn't want to be rude, but how far along is your sister?" "About five months give or take." Just like Johnny expected her green eyes went wide with shock. "It's sextuplets, or six kids, which is why she looks like she should have already popped. Also don't ask her about the entire five months pregnant, just got married thing, I can't say for sure but I'm willing to bet its a touchy subject."

Medusa nodded slowly once again. "I think if I remember correctly this floor's kitchen is this way correct?" Several strands of her hair did a pretty decent job of pointing since she evidently didn't feel like using her hands. "Yeah, why are you getting hungry? Reed keeps the fridges and what not pretty well stocked. but its more or less self service until he designs some kind of robot that'll automatically cook meals for you, which I'm sure he already has plans for in his head if not actual blueprints."

"Just the food alone will be more then enough." Johnny knew that wasn't exactly putting on the worlds most impressive display of small talk at the moment, but iof he'd learned anything from the few romance movies he'd seen, clearly sheer persistence could at times make up for a lack of skill. "Yeah, I guess living on the lam wouldn't exactly give a girl time to develop a taste for the finer things in life. But at least living here you won't have to worry about the where your next meal is coming from or working with creeps like your former partners."

Sure enough, all of a sudden Johnny had a flash of inspiration. "You should probably take your mask off though. Unless you've got a bunch of scars under that thing, and if you do I'm sure Reed could put you in contact with some people who could fix your face. I mean before these guys got to work on Reed he had been left with a face that was so leathery I wanted to make a baseball mit out of it, and not only thoroughly fixed it, but made it look like... well its a long story but suffice to say, he knows some very good plastic surgeons."

Medusa shook her head, reached up and took off her mask, sure enough underneath it was nothing but a very pretty face, and looking at it didn't turn him to stone. Granted he was starting to get the general feeling that looking at it for long enough might harden certain parts of his body. "Wizard wanted to me wear it to look more threatening. Considering that I don't have a single clue about who I am, I don't even have a identity to protect. In fact it'd be rather nice if I ran into someone who had some clue about who I am." Johnny couldn't do much in respond to that other then shrug.

--

"Well I suppose that's enough analysis for one night, even on such a remarkable subject." Susan unwrapped herself from around her hotrock and laid herself out on the floor looking up at Reed. "Of course she isn't a more remarkable subject then your wife, right? Also you do realize that if you've only got a couple of minutes left before tonight turns into tomorrow morning?" Reed began putting away his equipment.

"Susan, what color hairs do you think I want to find on my pillow in the morning?" "If you were any other man I'd say strawberry blond." A smirk was a very odd thing to see upside down, because from her current perspective it looked sort of like a frown, but not quite. "I was never a big fan of strawberries, so I think I'll take the blond straight up."

Susan grabbed one of her hairs and pulled at it so Reed could see how it stretched rather then snapped. "The only hairs on your pillow are going to be black. Not that you won't have company, I just don't 'shed', it's one of my many advantages that come with upgrading to an ultra class woman. So what did you find out?"

"You're really interested?" Susan gave an honest answer. "Not particularly, but I know you well enough that if you don't get this out of your system then it's going to end up seeping into your afterplay conversation, if not your foreplay, and I'd rather hear it come from your lips while we're not doing anything sexual.

So you talk, I'll lie here and nod along, and once you're done we can get down to some sweet matrimonial bliss. Remember, a good marriage is built on give and take." "I don't think Medusa is human." Susan extended her neck, then lifted it up into the air so that she didn't have to see Reed's expressions inverted. "Say that again? I mean if she's not human what is she, some kind of skrull or other alien?"

Reed shook his head, and twisted his neck slightly as if remembering exactly what data he had stored on his machines. "No. It is just hmm... okay you know how different 'races' of humanity are really nothing more then a fancy way of saying that someone is in possession of a certain set of recognized genetic alles, frequently dealing with skin pigmentation?

Well Medusa has the requisite 46 chromosome, and being female they can be broken down into 23 symetrical pairs. But there are 'hiccup's in her DNA, particular chromosomal arrangements that don't match up with standard human DNA patterns." "Which all adds up to?" Reed shrugged. "I only wish I knew.

The best I can do is draw analogies. If I saw this kind of deviation in any other type of animal I'd assume that it was an evolutionary offshoot that had officially become a different species. But of course as is common knowledge, the final sage of speciation requires the development of distinct matting rituals, to the point that the two sets of rituals are irreconcilable with one another. ..."

"Well my brother certainly seems determined to prove that she isn't that far removed from mainstream humanity. I'm probably going to have to keep a close eye on him even if Medusa looks like the type who can look after herself, better safe then sorry." Reed nodded slowly blinking about half a dozen times then coughing to clear his throat and continuing.

"Yes. Moving on, Medusa's body sample also shows she's been exposed to some kind of unknown mutagenic agent that I think its safe to say is responsible for her powers. Of course what that agent is, well that's thoroughly up to debate, for all I know it could have been some shampoo that accidentally got mixed with radioactive waste."

Susan blinked a couple of times herself. "You're making that up." Reed gave a very magnificent shrug. "I'm not saying its the most likely explanation, since in theory hair loss would be the most likely result from that particular event instead of rampant hair growth. Though I suppose it might be some kind of undocumented benign cancer that's limited to her hair, whcich could explain why its growths so quickly..

But like I said this is all nothing more then complete conjecture. It'd be like saying that if we hadn't known better someone might suggest Ben got his powers from being bitten or stung by some kind of irradiated or otherwise unique dragonfly. What does matter is the I've managed to identify a couple of traits of her hair.

The long and short version of it is that its not only stronger then ordinary human hair, but also most military grade building materials. Though what's even more dramatic is the simple fact that she's able to effectively orchestrate so many strands of it in perfect synchronization. You understand what I'm trying to say?"

Susan shook her head. "You're the smart one, what do you think the odds of that are?" The closest Susan was going to come to those particular calculations was "low" and leave it there. "Okay then, consider this. When you reduce your body to an amorphous blob like form from which you produce and control what amount to tenticals, how many can you comfortably handle?" Susan shot back her answer at once. "Four or five why?"

Reed nodded in time with her words. "Because it's showing that your mind is still to a certain degree unable to break loose of the concept of how your body worked when you didn't have your powers, which is a problably the price you pay for having your at rest apperence be bipedal instead of only ahcieving it through concentration.

But no matter what you do with your powers, you have trouble controlling more appendages at any given time then your used to dealing with. Which is why when you grew extra ones like wings and a tail you felt so unsure of your ability to walk properly. But Medusa, her mind is somehow able to handle a number of appendages which would doubtlessly create as sensory overload for even for someone of my intelligence."

Susan slid across the floor and resumed her normal appearance standing in front of Reed. "That sounds great, is this speech coming to an end any time soon or should I start finding myself a pillow?" Reed telikentically jerked the necessary lever to make a bed fold out of the walls of his lab.

"This speech is coming to an end, but unfortunately there's a genuine conversation that I do want to have with you before we do anything else. Would you mind joining me on the bed?" "You even have to ask?"

Soon enough the two lay on top of the bed's sheets facing one another. "Susan, about today..." "This is about how we almost bought it, isn't it?" Reed's faced paled, and for a moment Susan felt inappropriately thrilled at the fact that she could once again see the fluctuations of color in Reed's face. "I was going to put it more gracefully then that, but yes. I've already thought of half a dozen things I can do to make sure that if the Wizard or anyone else tries to pull off a similar stunt in the futre they'll get stopped cold before we even catch sight of them, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't design solutions to problems I'm not aware of."

Susan smiled leaned forward and kissed Reed on the lips. "You know it's funny that I should have to say this twice today but seeing as its something profound I came up with on my own, here goes. If we ever let the villains we deal with frighten us enough that we doubt we'll be able to keep our children safe, or wonder if its worth bringing children into the world, then we're letting them win by default."

Reed just laid there for a moment then he looked up at the ceiling, then looked back at Susan and slowly ran a hand through her hair. "That's it. I have officially given up trying to come up with a logical explanation for how a man as marginal as me ended up with a woman as wonderful as you. Given that personal is not the same thing as important I figure the world will be a better place if I don't waste my time pursuing what is doubtlessly one of life's most challanging question."

Susan stretched out her arms and wrapped them around Reed's body. "Hey, there's no way that you're mediocre Reed, your Fantastic in all kinds of ways. Yeah, you could spend every spare hour of every day turning this entire building into a fortress that fires on every single pigeon that passes by. Needless to say it'd be firing stun rays of a carefully tested strength so that the pigeons would be able to recover before they hit the ground, but you'd still be blasting away at birds.

Or you could work an amount of time that you feel is reasonable working on the building and an amount of time that you feel is reasonable in here with me, doing this, that, the other thing, possibly several other things in fact. Besides, look on the bright side, the two of us got taken completely by surprise and we were still winning up until Medusa got into the fight."

Reed looked over at the pile of discarded pieces of his armor on the floor. "Well I also had my armor on at the time, which was more luck then anything else." Susan twisted her neck around Reed's so that she could lean over his shoulder and look at the armor as well. "Speaking of your armor, I can think of a really good way that you could get even with Wizard, or at least make him and every other member of the sueprvillian community with half a brain, all five of them, realize why its a very bad idea to mess with us."

Reed twisted around so that he could look at her face. "Which is?" Susan looped her neck around Reed's again getting a perverse pleasure out of the way she could make him twist his head this way and that if he wanted to keep eye contact with her. "Well I'm don't consider myself a lawyer, especially in the field of how the law overlaps with people who have superpowers, but here's my view how things could go down tomorrow.

SHEILD shows up to pick up our two evil geniuses, and you talk with them about the possibility of getting your hands on some of the evidence after what should be a pretty darn clear cut case of attempted murder and, generic supervilliany for lack of a better term once you hand over the Baxter Building's security tapes. Then since your having trouble figuring out a suitable means of controllable propulsion for your armor why don't you try and build some of that antigravity technoligy into it?

I mean I could be wrong, but something tells me that men who are out to conquer the world don't bother to file the necessary paperwork to take out patents on their tools/weapons of death. So yes it would be dirty and underhanded, it would also seem like karmic justice for you to reverse engineer whatever they use against us, especially for superheroing purposes. I mean its what you did with Doom's armor after all..."

Reed was silent for about twenty seconds, which was the longest Susan had ever remembered him taking to think something out. "I could do that..." Susan elongated neck smiled down at Reed's. "Yeah. I mean you thought about that when you decided to become superheroes, right? That for just about every superpowered villain we ran into there'd probably be some mad scientist who had gone farther then you in one particular field because he specializes while you generalize?"

Reed's blue eyes suddenly got, very, very wide. "No I hadn't. Do you have any idea why I didn't have us tow Super Skrull's spaceship back to the Baxter Building? Because I'm sure if I could figure out even half of the technoligy that makes it up I'd be able to create spaceships that make my last one look as obsolete as an ass drawn chariot next to a bullet train."

Susan covered her face with a hand. "Well I do believe my chances of having sex tonight just went straight out the window. You're clearly going to be busy for the next hour at least or so imaging all the evil technoligy you want to take apart and put back together again. So I'll just leave you to that, and enjoy my side of the bed."

She untangled herself from around Reed, fluffed her pillow and laid down on it with her back to Reed who at once began to slowly run her hands through her hair. "Susan it's not like that." Susan's neck preformed a quick one hundred and eighty degree twist. "Tell you what then. Why don't I just compact myself down a bit and then I'll go dancing. Because, that way I'll be able to have my fun regardless of what exactly you're thinking about. You should just be grateful I've come to accept, and at this point in our relationship, even be amused by the undeniable fact that science turns you." Reed just smiled at her. "Science might turn me on, but only you get me off."

AN: Hopefully Medusa's change of allegiance, makes sense considering that she's pretty clearly portrayed as even while being a villain having moments when she's wondering how happy she is with the idea of offing anyone, and so when faced with committing either a really evil or a really good act she goes with the side of the angels.

Also the Wizard disserved a certain amount of credit in his first appearance, because this its the only time when having some but not all member of the Fantastic Four he decides to actively off them instead of using them as bate for the others or tapping them with some elaborate restraint systems, this time around he came up with an ingenious and simple plan for how to get rid of the FF that even Reed couldn't think of a solution to. Which I guess shows how threatening a villain is frequently is inversely proportional to how frightening/effective they are.


	11. Chapter 11

Swelling with love chapter eleven, Bonding: in which Susan Richards gets to see people

As Susan waddled through the hallways, the smell of something delightfully intoxicating filled his nostrils. She could feel her stomach rumble and the children within her womb stir slightly. Determined to find out just what was producing that wonderful scent this early in the morning, Susan stretched her neck right off her shoulders. She tracked the smell down to the main kitchen on this floor of the Baxter Building, which was just where she had been expecting it to be coming from of course. What exactly she found there was rather unexpected though.

Medusa was still dressed in her reddish purple outfit, though she had gotten rid of the black mask. She sat serenely in the middle of a flurry of activity. Her hair was spread all over the room doing this, that, and everything else. Susan had used her to powers to help in the kitchen as well (when you're pregnant and the spice you wanted was on the other side of the room, it made much more sense (or at least was much easier) to stretch an arm over for it then actually get up) but Medusa's hair was letting her do the work of at least half a dozen people all at once.

There were also plenty of examples of her work right there were already cooling pastries who were producing the aroma which had drawn Susan's interests. "What's this?"

Medusa smiled, her hairs not missing a single beat as they continuned their various tasks. "I'm making breakfast. I figured it's the least that I could do to try and make up for the less then pleasant way we were first introduced. That's not a problem for you is it Ultra Woman?" Susan began the process of pulling the rest of her body towards the kitchen. "Please call me Susan Medusa, we're all close as family in here one way or another.

It's not a problem, I'm just a little surprised. Reed might be a genius in the laboratory but he's hopeless in the kitchen, and the only positive thing I can say about Ben or my brother's culinary skills are that they're tastes in food are simple enough that they can look after feeding themselves. So I normally have to take care of making breakfast for myself and Reed."

Medusa's green eyes went wide with surprise. "Oh, but Ultr.. Susan considering that money isn't exactly an object to you, why don't you just hire someone to take care of such menial tasks?" As the rest of Susan's body caught up, Medusa carefully passed a chair across the table gripping it with several strands of hair until she carefully planted it behind Susan, who promptly seated herself.

"We considered the idea, but Reed was pretty quick to point out that they'd probably need to live here 24/7 or else some evil villain might kidnap them as a part of some attempt to get the better of us. Wizard already came close enough without having someone starting on the inside, though Reed says he's already working to make sure that the building's security systems notice the unique energy his antigravity technoligy generates. So even if he gets out of jail, we'll know he's coming next time. But my husband's renovation plans aside, what you're cooking right now, it smells really, really good."

Indeed Susan could feel herself starting to salivate, and as she stretched out an arm to grab one of Medusa's confections, a strand of hair lashed out against her limb. Susan twitched, in surprise rather than pain, but she did pull her hand back. "I just took those out of the oven, they need to cool a little more." Medusa certainly was proving herself to be a jill of all trades, not only that, but she was apparently able to practice most of those trades at the same time.

"So where exactly did you learn to cook?" Medusa just shrugged. "The first memories I can remember involve find myself waking up penniless in Paris, and apparently it turns out that you can't even be a thief in Paris without picking up some culinary skills by cultural osmosis. Though I haven't had much chance to try my hand, or should I say try my hair at it until now..."

Said hairs carefully opened up the kitchen's refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of water, while other strands grabbed a glass from a nearby cupboard, poured the water into the glass, and then set the glass down in front of Susan. "It must be pretty hard for you. Not just waking up with no idea who you are, but also having a power that makes you stand out in a crowd like Ben's does." Medusa smiled shyly.

"Yeah it does. I mean the only reason that I'm still a free women is because Wizard needed a powerful female to round out his quartet. At first I worked with him to 'repay' the debt I owed him, but I'd already started to realize how vicious he was, but killing a pregnant woman, that spelled it out for me in big bold letters.

I thought betraying him would mean I needed to go back to looking after myself 24/7, so thank you once again for everything." Susan gave the friendliest smile she could manage while her thoughts were somewhat helplessly fixated on the meal that was doubtlessly within arms reach. Granted "within arms reach" for Susan Richards covered just about everything she could see and sometimes things she couldn't, but that wasn't her fault. "Being alone just sort of out and out sucks all things considered.

After we gained our powers, none of us would have been able to make out as well as we did, if it wasn't for the fact that we had each other. In fact we probably would have ended up a lot like you did, lost, alone, and doing whatever the hell we could to get by including using our powers to take advantage of those without them." Some kind of mental timer went of in the green eyed woman's head and a couple of Medusa's hairs picked up the treat Susan had originally been reaching for, and passed it to her. Susan took a bite of it and chewed, her smile stretching itself larger.

As she looked at the inside of it she was able to see liquid chocolate dyeing some of the otherwise perfectly golden brown pastry's insides a darker color . "This can't be good for me..." Of course that didn't stop her from happily devouring the rest of the treat. "Well if a woman in your condition tries to watch her figure she's only going end up harming herself and her children. Besides, it is not as if you'd been doing a wonderful job of it before we met."

Susan could feel some of Medusa's hair brushing up against her belly underneath the table for effect and she nodded licking her lips in the process. "Yeah, I know. Reed has already pointed out to me that between all the kids I'm carrying and my unusually active lifestyle, for a pregnant woman at least, I need to scarf down around 3,000 calories a day. Which subsequently leaves me torn between feeling like a total pig, and wondering how well I'll be able to back to eating like a nonpregnant woman once I've given birth."

Medusa nodded sagely, a few strands of her hair brushing up against a few of Susan's. "You look just fine for a woman in your condition. And if you managed to handle yourself fine before your pregnancy you'll probably be able to do it afterwards as well. That said, might as well indulge while you've got a valid reason, eclair?" Susan snatched the item in question from Medusa's follicles with an elongated hand. "If that first one wasn't a fluke, then the only way I'd have just one of sample of your cooking is if you tied me in knots."

--

A somewhat more spherical Susan Richards then Reed remembered waddled her way into his lab. Granted, Susan was getting more gravid with every passing day, but that was usually a thing of milli and micrometers slowly adding up day by day. Now all of a sudden her belly seemed to have grown at least a full inch in diameter.

Also for the first time she seemed to be walking somewhat disjointedly, as if her center of gravity wasn't where she was used to it being. Which was probably why about halfway to Reed she just gave up on walking and allowed herself to lean back until she fell on her pregnancy padded posterior.

Then she simply stretched out her neck until it was seeing eye to eye with his with only about half a foot between their heads. "Reed, I officially take back any jokes or jibes I made about you finding Medusa interesting subject to study. We can keep her can't we?" Reed was understandably surprised. "Why the sudden change in heart?"

Susan's neck weaved a figure eight in midair as she smacked her lips loudly. "Because she cooks like a freaking goddess. Which means as long as she's here not only will I not have to worry about that particular chore, but more importantly I'll be able to wrap my lips around the stuff that she makes!"

The first point resonated rather more forcefully with Reed then the second. "I always thought you were rather proud of your culinary skill Susan."

Not just her head, but her neck as well began to swing back and forth. "I cook okay, in the sense of a couple notches above your stereotypical house wife. I can turn out reasonably good tasting food, and even do it in such quantities that I'm not worried about he prospect of having to cook for six kids. But the stuff Medusa can do in the kitchen?

Let's just say that the woman basically did to my mouth what you do to my vagina just about every night." Susan suddenly stopped talking and blushed profusely for about ten seconds. "On second thought, let me rephrase that, replace 'mouth' with 'taste buds' since I don't want anyone jumping to conclusions. "

Susan retraced her neck, slowly rose to her feet and managed to work her way over so that she was standing beside the chair Reed was sitting in. "So what have you been working on while I was apparently having oral sex with another woman?" They said 'laugh and the world laugh's with you', since Susan seemed to be in relatively good spirits Reed decided that he might as well give her another lesson in how to avoid tripping over her own tongue.

"Having oral sex with 'another' woman? As opposed to the woman you regularly have oral intercourse with behind my back?" If the second verbal faux pas had been unintentional then Susan came up with a response to it remarkably quickly. "That'd be Alica, funny story, all started when she told me she needed to carefully feel out my breasts for this statue she was going to make so that they'd come out just right.. Seriously though, what have I missed? I woke up alone in bed this morning, and considering we both went to sleep inside your lab I figured that meant you had something really important to work on, and I hate have missed a critical episode of 'the Superheroine and the Scientist' since can be such a complicated show to follow at times."

Reed sighed as he spun his chair so that once again he was facing his machines. "Guilty as charged on that particular account. But considering the day we had yesterday you'll understand if I felt you could use all the sleep you could get. As for what I've been doing, basically it's doing all the bureaucratic hand shaking you can possibly imagine with SHIELD on the subject of Medusa.

Mainly because they in turn are doing some bureaucratic hand shaking of their own with various French agencies, and what they have to report on Medusa seems to raise more questions then it answers." Susan' leaned forward intently, not to mention help balance herself. "How is that possible? You said that you were reading her mind and that everything she told us is true."

Reed sighed as his fingers began to dance across the keyboard in front of him. "If I was going to perfectly read her mind the process would take as long as it took for the events themselves to take place, which can make it a somewhat inefficient form of gathering data, as you might guess. So while I'm refining my skill at it as time passes, I was only hitting the high points of her memory, seeing if anything she'd said stood out as blatantly incorrect with her memories, which none of it did.

But so far, everything SHIELD has let me see, which in turn I suppose is dependent upon what the French let them see, suggests that the most they ever had on Medusa was a string of various acts of petty larceny that she could have been responsible for. The upside of this is that they aren't in any particular hurry to demand her being expedited, so we should be able to work something out fairly easily, which will probably amount to at most around a million dollars exchanging hands a few times before Nick agrees to let us effectively act as her parole officers, so long as she keeps on the straight and narrow.

The down side, is that there's nothing to suggest that the authorities were closing in on her when she was rescued by the Wizard." Susan scowled incredulously. "That seems to me like a pretty big difference between what she told us and what happened, how come you didn't pick up on it?" Reed pressed his right had on to his forehead and squinted in concentration slightly. "The Wizard did help her evade some force that'd been pursuing her for a very long time, and was getting dangerously close to catching her. That's what her memories have to say, sadly I'll be the first to admit that my psychic talents aren't and exact science.

I'm sure of those qualifiers, but exactly what events fulfil them..." "So your saying that we're playing mad libs, and even though she said the noun was 'police' it could have been something else entirely." Reed removed his hand and leaned back in his chair. "That's a rather crude way of putting it, but essentially correct."

Susan stretched out her arms and wrapped them around Reed's chest. "Okay then, so where do we stand with Medusa? I realize that truth justice and all that comes before my pregnancy cravings, so do I need to put the squeeze on her until she admits what actually happened?"

Reed gently pried Susan's elongated limbs from his body. "Just because there's a slight discrepancy between what we know and what we told us doesn't mean we should go quite that far Susan. Throughout Medusa's memories fear is a much more prevailing emotion then hatred, and at the moment she bares no particular malice towards us.

If she doesn't want to reveal every single facet of her past to us, then we will be good hosts and respect her privacy. Well let her tell us what she knows when she feels comfortable."

--

"So for lack of a more tactful way of putting it, wana have a catfight?" Medusa looked at Susan with wide eyed surprise. "You really want to, even in your condition?" Susan just shrugged. "I'm lucky as hell since my elastic body makes pregnancy pretty easy, not to mention means I can take way more punishment then I have any right to without putting my children in danger. Your powers are just controlling your hair right? Slapping, striking, squeezing, generally the kind of stuff I do with my entire body, I might not be Reed but I'm pretty sure there's not a single thing you could do with just your powers that would hurt my children even if you wanted to."

Medusa's hair began curling around her midsection creating a sort of a sympathy bludge in her figure. "That must be nice, not to have to worry. I don't think I have any children, I hope I didn't have any children who I left behind when I lost my memory." Susan nodded in sympathy. "Yeah, I've said it before and I'll say it again, not to mention Reed will confirm it I'm more or less undisputable the healthiest a woman has ever been while pregnant with sextuplets. But if you don't feel like fighting we could just climb into a bed, strip down to our underwear, hit each other with pillows, then decide to experiment."

Medusa's eyes twitched. "You're a little over eager aren't you?" Susan looked down at the floor for a moment then sighed. "You're right. But apparently according to Johnny you can't have two superheroes run into each other without a fight breaking out , and our first one basically consisted of me thinking "what is that" before getting a face full of knockout gas.

It could be that or any of half a dozen other things. I am actually pretty proud of my skill in that particular arena now that I've started to develop them and the last good fight I had was about three months ago. Ben actually knows the most about hand to hand combat, but judo tends to work better against an opponent who has bones. As for Johnny, well I managed to wrap him up pretty nicely the very first moment that I discovered my powers and the score between us hasn't changed. As for Reed, well he can get the better of me with his mental powers, but that's not really a fight.

Wizard recruited you because he thought we'd be pretty evenly matched, and I guess it'd be sort of fun to find out of he was right. Or maybe it's my alpha lioness instinct acting up, and all of a sudden now that there's another female in the pride I want to prove I'm still top cat. Or it could be that I've been living in here with three guys for too long and the entire 'show your affection by beating the crap out of each other' attitude has seeped into my personality by osmosis. Or it could just be what happen when you mix pregnancy hormones with superpowers. Like I said, I don't know why, I'm just sort of look at you and think that it would be fun, or interesting, or something that I can't name to fight with you.

It's not an antagonism thing, I don't know how anyone who has tasted your cooking could seriously hate you, it's more of a, okay why don't I have a friendly fight with her, then we could go shopping and braid each other's hair?

I figure that like most pregnancy cravings it's probably easier to just give in then try and fight or explain it, not that I'm going to jump on you out of a ventilation shaft if you don't want to spar with me.." Medusa shrugged. "It sounds like the kind of thing that falls squarely under the category of 'well it's not big deal since I came here thinking about killing her' so if you really want to I'll do it.

Besides it probably wouldn't hurt to take a chance to sharpen my own saw. I'm used to living on the run, so if I hang around here doing nothing all day I'll probably pile on the pounds pretty quickly myself, and since unlike you I don't have the excuse of being pregnant."

--

Medusa and Susan faced each other on opposite sides of one of the Baxter Building's many sparring rooms. "So we keep going till one of us either concedes or if they lose consciousness?" "Sounds fair enough?" Medusa nodded. "Count down from three?" Another pair of nods were exchanged.

"Three." Susan held up three fingers, and Medusa "held up" three strands of her hair. "Two." A finger and a strand of hair went down. "One." Another one went down. "Go!" Conveniently lowering that last finger had allowed Susan to curl her hands into ready made fists that she shot straight out at Medusa.

At first it seemed like Susan had caught her by surprise, but then at the last second several strands of Medusa's hair shot out and grabbed hold of Susan's limbs. Then they were a flurry of motion, just like when she had grabbed Susan's neck (although that had been with considerable more malicious intent) she was still able to easily twist, bend, yank and pull Susan's elastic body.

By the time Medusa's hair finally stopped moving, she had tied both of Susan's arms into a cute little heart, and though it didn't hurt her in the slightest, Susan was still impressed. "Wow, your hair moves fast doesn't it?" Medusa nodded, coyly stroking one tendril of her hair as she responded. "Wizard clocked my hair at being able to achieve supersonic speeds. Has your husband ever tested you to see how quickly you can stretch your body?"

Susan shook her head, actually a little surprised that someone could come up with a test that obvious that Reed hadn't put her through yet. "No, but you're right, its probably subsonic speeds." Medusa's hands began to dance slightly around Susan's entangled appendages. "Then it seems to me like you can't possibly launch an attack that I can't counter."

Susan raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Maybe so, but then again, maybe not, why don't we just see how things play out?" They hadn't reached any rules about truces during the match, but Susan counted to five in her head (even through in a "Mississippi" after each number) before she acted to make sure that her opponent couldn't claim that what happened next was any kind of sneak attack.

Her hands began to elongate themselves even further once more reaching out for Medusa, who once again countered with her hair. Susan felt the red strands wrap around her limbs, they were extremely flexible and powerful, meaning that she could slip right out of them or resist the way they played with her appendages. But she could keep lengthening her arms, forcing Medusa to keep grabbing new holds if she wanted to redirect Susan's limbs away from her.

"You can only stretch yourself so far, I'll just have to keep pulling at you until you reach that limit." Susan leaned back and fell to the floor, stretching up her neck so that she could still clearly see how the fight was going so as to properly manipulate her arms. Mainly because from this position she was able to throw her legs into the fight as well.

"That Reed has tested, it's fifteen hundred feet or since you say your first real memories are of finding yourself in France, in metric that's 457.2 meters." Susan's legs stretched out trying to coil her legs around Medusa's body, but she just glanced at this new threat before plenty of her hairs directed themselves to the task of tangling those two appendages up as thoroughly as her arms were.

Susan just sat there, and Medusa just stood there, and slowly area around Medusa's body began to resemble one giant red and blue ball between her hair and Susan's limbs. Susan began to slowly slide her neck clover across the floor a couple inches at a time keeping her eyes locked on Medusas.

Susan could win this, she could feel it. Medusa might be able to move all those hair tendrils at once, but she had a human body in the end, Susan only had to land one good blow to end this fight, while Medusa was had to seriously wear down and stretch out Susan's elastic body to stop her.

So she drew closer, and closer to Medusa, waiting for an opportunity to present itself, or thoroughly aware of the fact that Medusa might lash out with her hair towards Susan's neck as well. In the meantime she just kept up the back and forth battle going on between her limbs and Medusa's hair.

Susan lowered her head to the ground, and began to stretch her neck across the floor like a snake in the grass. Well a blue snake slithering across a metal floor that wasn't providing said snake much in the way of camouflage, but at least she was even thinner then most snakes.

She synchronized an attack between all four of her limbs, so that they came at Medusa as from above. Medusa turned her eyes upwards, and easily managed to once again get to work wrapping the limbs around each other. But at the same time, Susan shot out her neck, wrapped it around Medusa's right leg and pulled.

Medusa let loose with a cry of surprise as she lost her balance, but rather the fall to the floor she just redirected some of her hairs so that like a dozen minuscule legs they managed to support her body even as she "stood" at almost a perfect forty five degree angle.

Susan's neck continuned to work its way up Medusa's body wrapped her neck around her opponent. Not only did it give her just the kind of hold she wanted for the purposes of combat, it also made sure her words wouldn't get lost on the way from one woman's lips to the other's ears.

"Now might be a very good time for you to concede or else I'll just tighten my grip on your neck until you can't breath, let alone speak." Medusa's eyes slowly came to rest on Susan's. "You win." Susan retracted her neck and began to pull her body back together, a well disserved smile on her face. She would have pumped her arms decisively in accompaniment of her victory, but they were currently tied up in at two dozen knots, and there were at least five knots that involved all four of her limbs tangled around one another with Medusa's hair twisted between them as well.

"Hmmm... Medusa, I can't seem to get my limbs free from your hair." Medusa's face blushed almost the exact same color as her hair as Susan felt said hair tug against her thoroughly knotted body. "I hate to tell you this, but I can't seem to get a good portion of my hair free from your limbs."

Susan's head had momentarily been residing in its normal position on top of her shoulders, but at that announcement she proceeded to sigh so profoundly that her neck lengthen and her chin ended up right back on the floor again. "Well then I guess that leaves us with two choices. I could give Reed a quick mental call, of course if we do that we'll need to spend a couple minutes coming up with an explanation that will let come out of this with at least a couple scraps of dignity intact. The alternative is we could spend the hour or so it'll take us to let us walk out of here with our heads held high and not connected by anything other then ties of friendship."

Medusa looked the room who's doors they had closed to make sure they weren't interrupted halfway through their fight.. "What I think we should do depends more or less entirely on you. Your not hungry are you?" Susan shook her very long neck. "Not a chance after the last meal you maid for me." "Feel any sort of need to use the bathroom?"

Susan's head was promptly returned to her shoulders a second time with a mighty glower upon it. "That's a rather personal question don't you think?" A few of Medusa's follicles reached out to rub Susan's belly. "Sorry, it's just that I've heard it can be a had thing to keep control of for a woman in your condition, especially with so many, and I just wanted to make sure that in trying to avoid one kind of embarrassment I didn't cause you another."

Susan elongated her neck once again and managed to make a fair attempt at rubbing her belly with it, even though she preferred to use her hands for that particular task. "No, I'm good. Thanks to that particular bit of incentive I figured out pretty quickly how to use my powers to stretch the stuff inside my body in certain ways. One of them was making sure my bladder had enough room, and wasn't easily upset by anything going on around it, which is important when your lifestyle is as active as mine, and I also figured out how to.."

Susan just trailed off but Medusa couldn't let tangled superheroines lay where they chose to. "Figured out how to what?" Susan shook her head. "I'm not gonna tell you, too humiliating." A single red hair pointed towards the mighty mass that both women were being restrained by. "More humiliating then this?"

Susan knew for a fact that she wouldn't be able to get out of this mess on her own, and she wouldn't have been surprised if Medusa refused help her get free untill she'd heard that particular bit of information, so she decided that she'd just have to fight the battles she could win.

"Fine, but you've got to seriously swear that you won't ever tell anyone, okay? Not Ben, not Reed, and especially not Johnny okay? Because if you ever mention this to someone else then I don't care how fast your hair grows back I'll find a way to shave you bald and make sure that it sticks. Got it?"

Medusa nodded firmly. "Crystal clear." Susan gave one last sigh of resentment before speaking up. "Okay, here it is. Reed's always encouraging me to try and find new and creative ways to stretch my body, so one day I realized that if I played around with my internal anatomy, it was just a matter of creating the necessary pressure and properly releasing and directing it, I could... go to the bathroom standing up accurately. Or at least I think I can do it pretty accurately, I don't exactly have a conventional yardstick on hand that I could use to measure my performance against, there are some things that even a wife and husband keep to themselves and I'm damn sure this falls into that category.

Just so there's no room for confusion, it is all internal stretching, I don't look any different when I do it. I trust you can understand why I'm not exactly trying to advertise that particular power every chance I get?" Both women were blushing by the time Susan finished teaching and then Medusa said just about the worst thing Susan could possibly hear. "So what is it like?"

Susan glowered back and her, grinding her teeth slightly. "Frankly I don't see what all the fuss is about. So unless you have any other questions on the bizarre working of my nether regions, why don't we get start undoing this Gordian Knot we've worked ourselves into?"

--

The two women did just that. They agreed to focus on one knot of their choice at a time, and then slowly worked it free. At first it took the full concentration of both women to loosen the various knots they'd inflicted upon one another, but by the time they were halfway done the two had made a game of it. They'd pick out a pair of knots that they agreed were more or less the exact same size, and then at an agreed upon signal Medusa would get to work on one, and Susan on the other, however finished first was declared the winner of that round.

Neither one of them bothered to keep score from one round to the next of course since they had more important things to do. For example Susan used the time to run a list of ideas past Medusa on things that she needed to take care of once Reed was sure she'd be able to leave the Baxter Building without stepping on anyone's toes. Right at the top of that list of course was taking Medusa shopping so that she wouldn't have to walk around all day and night at that particular reddish purple outfit of hers which was bound to make her draw even more attention then her surplus of sentient hair normally would have.

By the time they finished untangling themselves (a process that required much more time and effort from both participants then the sparring match between them had) the two both certainty felt like they were fast friends. But then while even Reed knew that friendship wasn't the kind of thing that you could create through an equation, putting good food, a friendly fight, some time close together, and the sharing of a secret that not even Susan's husband knew, and if it wasn't something you could be sure of happening, it was at least the most likely result.

--

"Sper-ong!" The sound a rubbery spring was all the warning Reed got before Susan collided with him wrapping her body around his and dragging him to the floor. "Well, you're in a good mood." Susan seemed to be literally overflowing with energy. She wasn't actually trying to disrobe Reed, she was just sliding this way and that over his body.

"Yeah I know. Sorry, I just had a sparring session with Medusa and even though I didn't exactly kick her ass, when the dust had cleared I doubtlessly came out on top. Which makes means I can keep my crown of best superheroine, pregnant or otherwise in Baxter Building.

So yeah, I'm probably just sort of ridding a slightly overblown ego at the moment, but I just did some conquering in the sparring room, and I'm more then ready to go and do some in the bedroom. If you wouldn't mind that is..." I can't think of anyone I'd rather be conquered by."

--

The two lay comofrtably in the fold out bed in Reed's labratory. Or at least Reed laid in in comfortably, Susan was apperently on edge about something. "Umm, Reed, not that that wasn't great, because it was, but there's something I'd really like to try and I was wondering if I could talk with you about it." Reed sat up at once a wry smile on his lips. "Susan I've yet to hear of a single idea so horrific that it can't be brought up and logically debated. After all consider Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' for an example?" Susan twisted her neck into a questionmark. "Which was what again, all I'm sure of at the moment is that it didn't have anything to do with asking the woman he liked to marry him."

If it had not been for his perfectly calm tone of voice and the fact that Reed Richards didn't joke about this sort of thing Susan would have been sure what came out of his mouth next was a lie. "That the best way for the poor people of Ireland to move up in the world economically would be to give birth to as many children as the could, then once they could no longer survive solely on their mother's milk, kill them and sell their bodies for the component parts, meat skin, and so on.

His argument was well made logically, but incredibly repugnant from an emotional point of view. The king of 'proposal' that I'd have expected Victor to make, except he'd do it in all seriousness while Swift made his in jest. My point being that whatever you want to do just tell me, the only thing I'm likely to be unpersuadable on is the issue of you using your powers to penetrate my bodies offices. I don't mind letting you set the pace in bed, but a man must have his dignity after all."

Susan chuckled, that idea didn't particularly appeal to her either. "You know funny you should mention Victor for reasons that will make sense fairly soon. You see, for the last six months, I've basically been calling the shots in bed and it's been staring to wear on me. I'm only one woman and on average it takes me about two months to think up one months worth of fun superpower sexual activities. So I was hoping that you might be willing to bear some of that particular burden so that I can spend more time reading books on child rearing and less thumbing through the Karma Sutra and seeing where there's room for improvement."

Reed reacted exactly as she'd expected him to. "That's your big incredibly perverse favor?" Susan chuckled shyly, then sighed and got to the point. "Well, more along the lines of how you'd do it. They say that practice makes perfect right? So I thought that you might want to take some time to work on getting another doctorate in being mentally unbalanced and make a couple devices that would really put my elastic body through it's paces.

I'm not really a masochist, it is more an adrenaline thing, the rush that comes when I can say 'hah that didn't hurt me either' to the world in general." Reed just looked at her for a few moments blankly before responding. "So in other words you're asking me to basically come up with every possible method of restraining you I can think of, then use them on you?"

Susan nodded slightly feverishly. "Yeah and if you can turn it into an entire show so much better. That way whenever some evil villain breaks into some monologue about how they're going to conquer the world and what incredibly elaborate machine they're going to put me through I can just yawn roll my eyes and think 'big freaking deal I hear this kind of stuff as pillow talk' and promptly wallop the hell out of them."

Reed raised two fingers. "First of all, allow me to point out Susan that getting over confident doesn't won't do the team any good, and secondly you realize that I'll be understandably upset if I hear you start moaning heavily while listening to some villain describe is latest malevolent scheme?"

Susan slipped her body around Reed cuddling up against his body energetically. "Well I think it'll could work for us. Besides, if I run into even one trap that you've already put me into or is at least similar to, and thus can easily escape from... well suffice to say, kinky sex: can save your life and help you save the world."

"Besides, Reed, I know for a fact that I take pride in your intelligence and I'm willing to bet that you take a certain amount of pride in it as well. So personally I can't think of anything sexier then you using your mind to get the better of my body and I don't meant through telekinesis or telepathy or stuff like that.

I mean good old fashioned know how. Give Reed Richards a task that sounds impossible like finding a way to get the better of my body and watch him pull half a dozen ideas out of thin air before you can blink." Reed rubbed his chin smiling slightly. "I can't exactly pull them out of thin air, at least not ones that couldn't possibly harm you or your children. Because the first idea that comes to my mind is saturation with liquid nitrogen, or some other super cool chemical which would most likely leave you a completely encased in ice."

Susan wrapped his neck around Reed's and began to rub it up against his neck, and bare chest for all it was worth. "Well I trust you'll come up with something, and even if I could escape from it I'll just fake it and pretend I really am utterly helpless just for sake of fun."

Reed grabbed hold of Susan's neck and lifted it up so they were seeing eye to eye. "And the supervillian aspect?" She responded by elongating one of her arms and enlarging her hand before using to slap both cheeks of her ass. "Hell if I know exactly where that comes from. Preliminary tests seem to say that I'm bad, bad girl who got herself knocked up before she got married and needs to be punished for it."

--

"What do you think?" A week had past since Susan she had made her particular request. Everyone had gotten to know Medusa better, Ben had taken her to meet Alica, she'd gone shopping with Susan, and Reed had done a few more test on her, though he hadn't been able to find out anything about where her or her powers had come from. Most of all of course Johnny had hung around her making puppy eyes and otherwise trying to look as adorable and hansom and gentlemanly as possible.

Most importantly to Susan, Reed finally had the torture chamber she'd requested ready. It looked more or less just like his lab, metal walls (for some reason she'd expected stone) and lots of machines of various design that she wasn't able to comprehend.

"So for the record, if anyone else finds out about this place, what is it?" Reed smiled as he picked up a many buttoned remote of a table. "It's a room I made for testing how people with superpowers react under abnormal conditions." Susan couldn't help herself, she gave Reed a one woman round of applause. "Okay that makes it officially, whenever our kids ask questions with unpleasant answers, your the one who handles them. Because I can't think of a single person who would hear you say that, myself included, and think that you really meant 'kinky sexitorioum'. So is it ready for a test drive?"

Reed pressed a button on the remote and what looked for the most part like a perfectly ordinary operating table descended down to floor level. "Would I have brought you in here if it wasn't? More importantly do you still want to?"

Susan nodded as she approached the operating table noticing one small discrepancy. "I don't think our actual villains are going to be kind enough to put pillows on whatever they're strapping me down to." Reed walked over to the table as well taking a moment to fluff one of the ordinary white pillows which was so very horribly at odds with the intended mood of the room.

"Susan I said I'd do it just as long as you let me make sure that I our children couldn't possibly come to harm. Look on the bright side, once you get up here you won't have to look at them." Deciding that this was not a fight worth picking, Susan clambered up onto the operating table and once she was laying down on it had to admit the pillows were enjoyable to have underneath her.

"So how does this thing work?" Reed pointed upwards towards something else Susan' couldn't quite make out. Up there I have an iron pot with a trick bottom filled with water. When I press a button on this remote the bottom drops out and with any luck at least seventy five percent of the water falls into a wooden bucket beneath it. That bucket has a small hole in the bottom so the water from it will slowly drip into this bucket right here."

Susan had been wondering about why there was a wooden bucket on a small table in the middle of nowhere, but she had possessed faith (and been rewarded for it) that it was all part of Reed's diabolical plan. The bucket with a hole in it is connected to these..." Reed put his hands on what looked like an oversized pair of fishing reels. "Once I activate these the less that top bucket weighs, the more they'll begin to pull upwards. Meanwhile that bottom bucket is placed on top of a pressure sensor which is attached to these..."

Reed walked over and now rested his hands on another pair of the same style device that were down by Susan's legs. "The more the bottom bucket weighs the more they pull downwards. So for my first scheme I plan to tie your arms in overly complex knots to the upper reels, your legs to the bottom ones, and thus when I press this particular button I'll have a fully automated rack."

Susan once again broke into unasked for applause. "So how long did it take you to make this?" Reed sighed. "To be honest it took me longer to remake it then to make it. The first version I made was a bit to clinical for my liking, then I realized that the two bucket system created a nice 'drip, drip, drip' sound akin to Chinese water torture."

Susan nodded along eagerly, the more she heard about this the more she liked it! "So what comes after that?" Reed just stroked her hair and smiled. "Do you really want me to spoil the surprise?" For an answer Susan began elongating her arms toward the two reels and Reed got to work securing them to the metal contraptions.

After about four minutes he felt confident of the job he'd done on all of them and gave the things a few manual cranks to get her limbs nicely entangled.. "How's that, comfortably, snug?" Susan pulled at her limbs, she could have still stretched them further but they were pretty securely knotted around those things which in turn she doubted she'd be able to pull loose any time soon. "I'd need to go back to the girlscouts for a couple weeks before I'd be able to untie those knots on my own." Reed just nodded obviously running down his own mental checklist. "Remember the safe word?" Susan exhaled in irritation. "It's not like I'm going to forget 'I'm getting fed up with this orgasm' any time soon."

For his part Reed just playfully patted her belly and smiled. "Just making sure, in theory nothing I've got planned for tonight should be capable of harming you but it never hurts to take precautions. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go get dressed for the part."

Reed put down the remote and left leaving Susan trapped. Well not really trapped, it'd be child's play to stretch out her neck, wrap it around the lever that was connected to the first bucket and pull it backwards making it work in reverse till her arms came loose, then do the same for her legs. But then realism usually was the first victim of sexual roleplaying in any relationship.

Reed returned in wearing all of his armor except the gauntlets. "I trust your accommodations are sufficient Ultra Girl?" If Susan had been able to work her arms free she would have applauded again, Reed really could produce magnificently villainous voice when he wanted to, or maybe consider who's body he now occupied it was just a matter of going with the flow.

Susan strained meekly and inefficiently against her restraints before laying still. "It's Ultra 'Woman' you maniac and you had just better hope I get my hands on you before my husband does!" There was slight upturn of the eyes that let her tell that there was doubtlessly a smirk behind that iron mask. "I don't think your hands are going anywhere..."

He scooped up the remote and pressed a button. There was a "slosh" of water falling on mass then the "splash" of it landing followed by slow drips. "And for imagining yourself to be worthy of the title 'Woman' hah! I'll prove to you just what a foolish delusion of grandeur that was Susy..." Susan didn't have to fake the look of irritation that came to her face now. She didn't mind it when Ben called her that (well it had been slightly odd when they had been quasi dating) because it he said with the kind of affection you'd expect an older brother to address a younger sister. That time Reed had made it sound like he was a parent addressing a child.

He approached her and began rolling her pants down towards her ankles which was about as far as they could realistically go at the moment. "For example weather or not you know it you're about to turn those lovely sky blue panties of yours a somewhat darker shade of indigo."

Susan laughed off his request. "Yeah right. I don't know what pregnant superheroine you think you're dealing with but I've got a bladder like a bank vault, it opens when I want it to and only when I want it to." He began to roll up the top half of her outfit as well running a hand a slow meticulous finger along her belly. "Well then I hope you have it insured, since I am about to break it wide open."

Susan shrugged as best she could in the situation. "Do your worst." Reed pressed a button on the remote that he was holding. "Believe me I shall, but first why don't I set the tone?" The rollers began to rise upwards until the lifted Susan off the table she had been laying on as well. Then they began to spin forwards and back alternatively pulling her limbs in and letting them out completely at random.

At least that was Susan thought at first, however she quickly realized that there was method to "madness" Reed had manufactured for her. The in and out back and forth caused her body to gently sway this way and that, and she quickly guessed it was a pretty fair approximation of how a baby must feel while its crib was being rocked, it certainly was rather relaxing as long as she wasn't think about what the situation was suppose to be.

Then Reed pressed another button and from a pair of well hidden speakers the sound of water dripping from the top bucket was played into her ears. One on hand that was so incredibly cheesy she was surpassed there weren't rats trying to take bites out of it. On the other she had to admit that it was one of those tried and true trying not to think about it only made you think about it more moments.

"So how does it feel to have acid eating through your vaults hinges?" Susan shot back her reply at once since it gave her something else to think about. "Please, even I know that pure water has a pH of seven." Reed clicked his tongue slowly and mournfully. "Still far too osbstinant for your own good I see. Well why don't I try setting of some blasting caps?"

Reed walked around her body slowly grabbed hold of her feet pulled at them till fully emerged out the other side of the reels they had been forced into and resumed their normal uncrushed shape. Then he removed her blue unstable molecule boots and socks before reaching out and gingerly caressing her toes. "You know I thought it was much too delightfully feminine when you had your panties match the same color as your outfit, but I stand corrected. That you'd paint your toenails the shame shade of blue as well..."

Susan did not giggle she laughed, her toes had never been very ticklish all things considered. "Well considering how slowly your evil plot is moving I had time to do my makeup, nails, toes, lather, rinse, repeat, and spend a few minutes just enjoying my reflection in the mirror before we had to worry about stopping you."

Reed had of course been expecting this reaction and let go of her feet pulling an object from his cloak. "Do you know what this is?" Most of the times Reed asked that question Susan would have only been able to shake her head but surprisingly enough this time she did know. "It's a feather."

It really was amazing how much of Reed's expressions she could read with just his eyes to work from, like how she was dead sure a demonic smirk now lurked behind that mask. "Correct. And now to properly apply it to the task at hand." Reed pulled back her panties with one hand and used the feather held in his other to tickle her vagina. That Susan had to admit to herself was the equivalent of drilling straight through the vault, not much style but very effective.

She did manage to gasp out a couple words however. "If your going to hold my panties up like that I'm not going to soil them." The ostrich feather kept right on tickling. "My dear you underestimate my skill at reading faces, yours is a complete open book to me."

It was true after all, over the last few months Reed had become pretty good at being able to tell when she was building towards, and when she was actually experiencing a climax. Thus by the time he pulled back the feather and let go of her panties it didn't make a bit of difference as a few moments later Susan's body was flopping about like a fish, her twisted condition distorting her normal reaction to having an orgasm.

By the time she got her body back under control she could indeed feel the dampness of her panties, but it would take more then that to vanquish her spirit. "So you're going to try and sex me into submission? Better men then you have attempted and failed at that task."

He pressed a button and the reels lowered back down depositing Susan once again on the table itself with the pillows ready to help support her pregnant frame. Then she gave a slight "urk" of surprise as both of the reels pulled her arms and legs into them up to her elbows and knees though the rest of her still remained upon the table.

"Not even close. Besides Susy, only an irresponsible girl would find herself spending the first month of her marriage five months pregnant..." Reed began to roll up her shirt even further, exposing her unstable molecule bra. "You're proud of those breast aren't you?" Susan threw a saucy wink in with her reply. "Are you going to tell me I shouldn't be?"

Reed cackled and pressed another button on the remote, causing two large tanks of thick white fluid to descend down to the ground. There was something that looked like a thin hose attached to each one except instead of a spicot they both ended in a needle. "Well we will just have to see how proud you are of your milk swollen mammeries once I'm done with them."

Reed removed up Susan's bra, then he took one of the hoses and gently pressed the needle through her right nipple. Susan winched and acted on instinct. "I'm getting fed up with this orgasm!" Reed at once pulled away his voice returning to its normal tone. "Sorry, was I laying it on too thick?" Susan squirmed slightly trying unsuccessfully to dislodge the metal implement that was pricing her flesh by using her powers. Eventually she settled for simply focusing her eyes upon it.

"No, it's just that actually hurt, and it actually went through me! I though you said that kind of thing couldn't happen." Reed approached her and gently pulled the offending needle out. "Of course it did. If your entire body was completely elastic then your breasts would become totally ornamental, regardless of what nice ornaments they are. I can't be sure, but hopefully your womb will likewise try to moderate just how elastic it is, or else if I don't induce labor by puncturing it then you could still find yourself still carrying our six children inside of you six years later."

Susan thought all that over for a moment. "So how large is this nonelastic area of me that is apparently centred around my breasts?" Reed shrugged still holding the hose. "I couldn't be sure unless I did some tests, but probably no larger then it needs to be to let milk out. If someone with a sniper rifle fired a bullet so that it impacted directly against one of your nipples it would still only make your body bend to absorb the kinetic force before bouncing off."

Susan managed to smile at that. "Okay then, just making sure I hadn't develop a pair of Achilles Heels, seeing as that buckets still dripping you may resume when ready?" Comforted that it didn't mean something was wrong with her powers (in fact it meant something was right with her body) she didn't even wince as the needle went back in, though she did bite down on her rubbery tongue slightly as its twin joined it right smack dab in the middle of her left breast.

"You're children will thank me eventually Ultra Girl, by the time I'm done with your breast they'll be ready to feed six dozen children!" A press of the button, and the white fluid began to flow through the hoses towards her breasts. There was a very odd sensation that she was starting to get from them, not painful just odd. "What are you doing?"

Another delightfully villainous cackle as he patted the white tank. "Simple. Even though those needles are small they're still pushing this milk in with greater force then your body can muster to push it out. By the time this tank is halfway empty your matronly mammaries will have become so swollen even larger then your child bloated belly."

Susan licked her lips as she did a little internal stretching, yes it would have been child's play to just yank those things free with her neck, but that would have been to easy. Her attempts to block the slow flow of milk into her bosoms by playing around with what was inside her body went utterly unrewarded and the lower bucket filled with liquid, so did her breasts.

Slowly and insidiously they swelled until they were the size of basket balls and threatened to start rubbing against each other. Then they stopped just threatening, and started to do just that. Needless to say they also began to droop downwards towards the shelf of her belly. Not content to stop there, they kept growing, one dropping down past either side of her belly, and eventually falling off the table.

SPLOSH!" Both of her breasts where now a pair of flesh couldered boulders that had to weigh something in the neighbourhood of fifty pounds. Only after they had planted themselves quite firmly on the floor did Reed push a button shutting of the flow of milk, and then pulled the hoses from her body.

"There, now you three boobs will be able to keep each other company once I'm finished with you. Which will be very soon, but first I must attend to the constant irritation of your voce. So a good little girl and open your mouth..." Susan could feel the liquid inside her breasts still sloshing back and forth like miniature wave pools. She favored her "captor" with a big smile letting her tongue fall out of her mouth.

For his part, Reed reached out and grabbed hold of her tongue and pulled on it. Needlessly to say it stretched outwards, and he kept pulling on it until there was almost a foot worth of the thing, at which point he got to work wrapping it around itself. Reed had obviously been studying his knots recently, but then for someone who did quantum mechanics in his sleep, memorizing how to tie knots was probably no challenge at all.

Once he was satisfied he yanked down her lip and slipped the knotty ball of flesh back into her mouth. "There we go, lets see at how good you are at untangling all of that by touch alone." Susan's response came out hopelessly grabbled that sounded like a long batch of consonants strung together.

"Quite a mouthful you've got there isn't it? But something tells me your husband will thank me when he finds out about it since any real man knows that wives should be kissed and not heard..." Susan managed to get a half snicker out through her throat which now had a slight bullfrog like bulge in it due to the tangle of knots in it. Of course she could have fairly quickly untangled that mess of tangled flesh even by touch alone, but for the moment she left it.

"And now for the piece de resistance not that you'll be capable of much resistance." Reed reached into a near drawer and pulled out what looked like a mechanical cockroach. "Given your current condition actual physical intercourse would be quite difficult, so I'll be using this instead." Reed once again pulled back her panties and deposited the small device in them. Then he twisted the remote around slightly and began to press buttons upon it intently.

"My charming little device has a miniature camera and flashlight built into it for the purpose of exploring small dark caves, whatever their nature." Susan's face twisted slightly as she felt the thing burrowed its way inside of her and then began to work its way along the length of her nether regions letting out another murmur.

"I am of course aware of the fact that you can stretch the inside of my body as easily as the outside, and as such you could quite easily crush my little toy simply by concentrating. But then in a few moments, concentration is the last thing you'll be capable off. You see I installed this thing with a self destruct system that works by causing it to vibrate until it literarily shakes itself apart. Of course on a slightly lower setting..."

--

"So how was it?" Susan had to grit her teeth again as Reed began to use the same apparatus that had inflated her breasts to their current absurd state to drain them back to their normal much more manageable size.

"I actually enjoyed it. The way those things were slowly stretching out my arms and legs felt a lot more like a good massage that slowly worked all the kinks out. The tickling was a bit over the top, but hey I came. The breasts that where so big they would have broke my spine if I still had one were pretty darn amusing once I got over that prick, apparently being effectively invulnerable hasn't done wonders for my pain tolerance. The bug, well I think the fact that I ended up unintentionally crushing the thing somewhere around my... well to tell you the truth I sort of lost track of how many I'd had after the third. So how was it for you?"

Reed smiled. "I must admit Susan it was interesting. As you doubtlessly noticed I worked a few tests that I'd wanted to preform on you but hadn't had time in among the 'tortures' I subjected you to. Which has proven that even though they can let liquid in and out, for the most part your breasts are surprisingly water tight. Which is of course a good thing because no matter how much milk eventually builds up in your breasts naturally it'd be a shame to let any of it go to waste."

Susan stretched out her hands using one to pat each of her corresponding breasts, which were to all appearances taking their own sweet time returning to their orrigional size, at the moment though they were still noticeably larger then beachballs. "I can see how you'd think that way, but remember duty before pleasure, which in this case means the kids get to drink before you."

Reed not at all casually licked his lips. "And if I invented some blend of chemicals that was either healthier for children to drink then actual breast milk?" Susan stretched her hands out to an even greater degree managing to work them underneath her slowly shrinking milk sacks. "Well then I suppose it'd be the story of the industrial revolution all over again. These poor girls left unemployed due to technological advances that made their jobs obsolete.

Forced to hang around doing nothing all day but become more and more of a burden as they search desperately for someone who might still have some use for them..." Reed of course knew his time to chime when he heard it. "I think I could be that man." Susan blinked a couple times to get an appropriately starry eyed look in her eyes. "Could you? That'd be so wonderful to know that my children where getting the best nutrition available and yet not have to worry about my boobs getting so swollen that I burst a vessel, assuming I still have them, you'd probably know better then I do."

Reed joined her on the bed that he had built one into the walls of this room, (yes that made two concealed beds but then it wasn't like cost was an issue) that he'd moved Susan onto after they'd finished playing. "Well if tonight has proven anything it's that you'll have to worry about the sheer weight of your breasts before you have to worry about them 'exploding' or something along those lines due to being too filled with milk."

Susan nodded and then stretched out an arm wrapping it around Reed. "Okay, so just for the record, I had fun, and you had fun, right?" At her husbands nod, Susan went from sitting down to reclining on on her side, a wide smile on her face. "Great, because I really enjoyed that. I forgotten how much fun sex could be when all you're doing is laying back and letting your man have his way with you!

When you're barely even thinking but just reacting total on instinct and your entire through process basically goes 'okay what is he gonna do now... he can't possibly, oh my god he is... sweet merciful crap why didn't he do that sooner?' over and over again. So why did you enjoy it?" Reed lay down next to Susan stroking her neck. "Well to be perfectly honest the entire making devices to sexually test your powers, that actually brought me the closest I've ever come in my life to masturbating."

Susan took that for the somewhat bizarre compliment it was though she couldn't exactly let it just lay there. "So you really never have..?" "Never, why?" Susan twisted her neck so that it was looking away from him. "Going without you for six months was about three months longer then I could stand. Moving past that particular subject, lets get back on the original issue of wether or not this could become a standard fixture of our relationship? Because like I said, not needing to focus on what exactly I was going to need to do to please you next, really gave me time to focus on how my own body was practically exploding with pleasure, sorry if that sounds selfish."

Reed gave her neck a second twist so that they were once again seeing eye to eye. "Susan, there are so very few things I wouldn't do to please you in bed. If you feel like getting your kicks out of being aggressive then I'll let you lead, if you want to be more submissive then I'll lead. That's one of the reasons you should consider yourself lucky you married a scientist, we're a breed known for our love of experimentation, and trying to find out what lays beyond previously established boundaries. "

Susan giggled. "Well then 'Supervillian Saturdays' it is. Just one little condition, don't ask me to switch places, because I'd be actually hurting you, and that's just, well, well I don't have words for it, but I can't stand the idea."

The two just contemplated that for a while and then a mental image popped into Susan's mind that left her with no choice but to laugh. Reed of course knew her well enough to tell that this was just her imagination acting up rather then some sort of intentional mockery.

"So what was it this time?" Susan smiled back at him. "Mental image, me waddling around in high heels, wearing an outfit of made of black spiked leather that's obviously be of a pretty revealing nature, especially around the middle since I don't think they make dominatrix corsets for pregnant woman." Reed just smiled flirtatiously at her. "Well, Susan you would look fetching in black." Susan smiled flirtatiously right back at him. "All that and then there was the sound effect." "Sound effect?" Susan decided to show rather then tell. She stretched out one of her arms and then twisted it, causing it to produce a sound remarkably like the cracking of a whip.

As her arm returned to its normal length, Susan sighed submissively. "And it just dawned on me: whips, ropes, levers, pullies, capable of molding itself to fit into even the smallest or largest of spaces, you've already mentioned how since I've gained my powers, my skin feels slightly inorganic when compared to the human norm, I'm like a walking talking sex toy aren't I? Well I suppose that realization just goes and makes me doubly glad that decided not to call myself Rubber Girl considering all the new implications that phrase suddenly has."

In response to that particular comment, Reed craned his neck forward, and licked the tip of Susan's nose. "Well your intentions tonight were to give me a chance to play with you wasn't it?" Susan could find no proper response to that, so she did the only thing she could , changed the subject, partly at least.. "Reed Richards you are too kinky by half, at least you doubtlessly would be for an ordinary woman." "Well then I guess I should consider myself lucky that I married an Ultra Woman."


	12. Chapter 12

AN: Thanks to both marvelousmariaah and Wolvmbm for the review and alert they've given this story respectively.

Chapter twelve: Rebounds, in which Jonathan Storm loses one girl, but meets another.

"If any of you had told me a year ago today that within the next 365 days of my life I'd get married to the woman I love with all my heart and she would be pregnant with our children I would have said hat it was plausible. If you'd have told me that I would become world famous I would have said it was possible and certainty something to hope for. If you'd have told me that I would develop superpowers, do battle with diabolical maniacs, monsters, aliens, and others all while managing to accomplish those firs two possibilities I would have said you were insane.

After the crash, I was doubtlessly one of the most pathetic creatures ever seen by man. If it hadn't been for the three of you who carried me back to civilizaiton I doubtlessly would have ended up being consumed by some passing animal since I would have been utterly unable to defend or look after myself.

So even though you might look to me for leadership, I look to you as the greatest friends and family a man could ever possibly be lucky enough to have. So allow me to raise a glass, and here is to hopefully at least another forty fantastic years I hope to spend in your company."

The five of them were seated around a circular table, Medusa looking something like the odd woman out since she was still dressed in her purple outfit while the rest of them were all wearing their blue unstable molecule uniforms.

As Reed raised his glass of champing Ben sniffled slightly and reach for a napkin. "Jeez professor are yah trying to make me cry?" That said a moment later he put down the napkin he raised his own glass. "I'll drink to that though, to old friends who you can always count on to have your back."

Johnny raised his glass with a not so subtle glance towards Medusa. "To the new friends we've made since then." Susan rubbed her pregnant belly and raised her glass of ice water (Reed would have all but blown a gasket at the idea of her touching (even with her fingers) so much as a single drop of alcohol in her condition) with a smile on her face. "To the new friends that we hope to make in the future."

Medusa slowly raised her own glass held by a hand rather then by hair. "And to the second chances that we get that let us make good on past mistakes." Reed knew of course that Medusa was probably primarily reflecting upon her own situation when she said that, but he nodded enthusiastically all the same, because in reality it applied just as much to them as to her.

To Reed being in the Fantastic Four meant a second chance in the form of making good on the mistakes he had made that caused the accident that had given them their powers. As for the others, well he could only guess, but the day Reed Richards ran out of theories would be the day that someone managed to find out what the last digit of pie was.

To Ben it was a second chance to use the skills he'd picked up in the army to do something good for his country considering that there weren't any wars going on at the moment that America was either involved in or seemed likely to become entangled in. To Johnny it was a second chance to do something useful with his life besides becoming a mechanic.

To Susan, it was a second chance for her and Reed to do something together, and quite possibly their first chance to do something together as more or less equals. Yes he was the team leader, but they were certainty closer to being equally proficient as superheroes then in any other field they both cared to try their hands in.

They'd all gotten second chances, Reed had even gotten more then one in fact. Well that was the beauty of life itself, until it was over you could always try and make your life and the world you lived in just a little bit better.

"So now that the pleasantries are out of the way why don't we get down to the celebration. I might not be able to have anything 'fun' to drink but that doesn't mean I can enjoy the food."

--

"Susan are you all right?" Susans slowly opened her eyes and as she looked around she realized that she and Reed where the only ones left in the kitchen. "Whoops, I guess I must have fallen into a food coma or something." Susan tried to stand up, and then all but instantly realized what a bad idea it was. Her husband of course had no trouble picking up on the look of discomfort and surprised that crossed her face. "Something the matter?"

Susan leaned back as fully in the chair as she could, which was near far enough for her liking. Then she looked down at her belly which despite the impressive size it'd been when she'd sat down to eat had now grown even larger, and patted it, that was another mistake. It sent her belly's contence rumbling about sending more spikes of internal discord through her body.

Eventually they passed however and she was able to make conversation. "I'm S-T-U-F-F-E-D STUFFED! And not like I just overate a little bit, you might as well stick some feathers in my hair put me in an oven because I'm stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey."

Reed quickly realizing that Susan's belly was going to be off limits for a while, so instead he simply positioned himself behind her and ran his hands through her hair as a way of showing affection. "Well you hardly looked like a turkey to me Susan, though I must admit you have some rather spectacular breasts."

Susan moaned again though this time it was at Reed's bad joke instead of physical discomfort. "Reed I know tonight is the anniversary of the Fantastic Four, but can we please, please, please from the bottom of my heart and all that jazz, not have sex tonight? Because honestly I feel like if I get one more thing shoved inside me then I just might explode." "All right."

Susan twisted her head around so that she could look Reed in the eyes. "Really?" Reed smiled as he patted her on the shoulder. "Susan, how often in the last four months have I actually asked you for sex?" Even though he current state of severe engorgement was leaving Susan feeling rather sleepy didn't take her long to come up with answer. "About as frequently as you need to ask a waiter to bring you something from a buffe. You don't need to, because it's right there offering itself to you if you want it."

Reed just lightly tapped a glove finger to Susan's nose still smiling. "Susan we're married. The two of us can have as much or as little sex as we like in whatever position we like and its no ones business but our own. Right now I think the more pressing issue is what can I do to help you start feeling more like yourself again."

Susan hung her head, increasing the length of her neck till her chin almost touched the floor. "I don't think there's anything you can do, except help me get back to sleep, I should wake up in only a week or so and have digested all this by then." Reed bent down and picked up Susan's head lifting it up so that they were once again seeing eye to eye. "All right then that's what I'll do." Reed began to reach into Susan's mind with mental fingers as he continuned to stroke her hair with his actual ones. "You are getting very sleepy..."

--

Susan slept in till about noon the next day and thus was somewhat surprised to wake up on the bed in Reed's lab and find the other occupants of the Baxter Building clustered around her. "I know as a mother to be I need my beauty sleep, but if there's some villain wreaking havoc on the city you could have woken me up."

Reed got into bed with her smiling. "It's nothing that serious Susan. Remember what we talked about before the celebration last night?" Susan sighed, shook her head and then remembered. "Oh yeah, the ultra sound. Is twenty four months along far enough for something like that when your pregnant with sextuplets?"

Reed just smiled. "What answer do you think I'm going to give you?" Susan stretched out her body slightly so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. "That you've got some piece of equipment somewhere in here that'll let you do it?" "That's a certainly one susinct way of putting it."

Susan twisted her neck around looking at the others. "So just for the records how is the pool shaping up?" "What pool?" Susan was far from convinced, she stretched her neck over so that she was looking her younger brother right in the eyes. "Well lets see, I'm pregnant with six kids of currently unknown gender. Not that I don't appreciate all of you showing up, but you're going to have to come up with a more convincing lie then 'what pool' before I believe that you aren't taking bets on what sex they turn out to be. And as we're about to find out, this happens to be my last chance to get in on the action."

Susan began to rub her belly for emphasis as she finished explaining. "I mean these boys and girls, assuming I'm not carrying all of one or the other have been freeloading in my womb for the last half a year, its about time that they did something to earn their keep."

Ben just smiled and chuckled. "Reed might be the brains of the relationship, but our a pretty smart cookie yourself Susy. By the way it was started by your synthetic sibling to my right." Johnny turned and glowered at Ben. "Oh yeah sell me out the first chance you get, way to repay me for not charging you a vig! Anyway Sis it's pretty simple since I asked Reed to figure out all the percentages. Three of each is an eleven get you sixteen. Four of one and two of the other is fifteen get you sixty four. Five of one and one of the other is three gets you thirty two. And all one way or the other is one to sixty four."

Susan was less interested in the actually percentages then how they had come to be. She twisted her neck around even further to glare at her husband. "You actually helped him figure out the odds for the betting pool?" Reed shrugged helplessly. "Johnny asked me what the odds were, I thought it was out of nothing more then general interest at the time. Besides, calculating the odds were no more difficult then those related to the probability of obtaining a certain number of heads or tails after flipping a coin six times. Suffice to say it wasn't the most challenging of endeavours."

Susan twisted her head back around again, which meant her neck was officially doing something to the order of a 420 degree twist. "All right then, since they are MY kids, well my and Reed's kids, I trust you'll be honest when I ask you where the money currently stands?"

Johnny blushed slightly. "I put down two hundred dollars on four boys and two girls. You already 'had' one girl in the form of Gale, so I think I'm willing to bet you've got more Y then X chromosomes growing in there."

"You realize that girls have two X chromosomes and boys have one X and one Y don't yah Johnny? So that sounds to me like a bet you're gonna loose no matter what the end result is. And I went with a hundred and fifty dollars on three of each."

Reed chipped in his response before Susan had to twist her head around again to face him. "I put down one hundred dollars on three and three and three as well Susan." Medusa's hair twisted and turned like someone awkwardly ringing their hands. "Fifty dollars on four girls and two boys." Susan untwisted her neck and pondered. "By the way, where is this money coming from?"

Now it was Johnny's turn to sigh in irritation. "Sis, I realize that you like to plan for the future, but we're all betting less then a quarter of a grand, which means exactly jack measured up against the amount of money that Reed's inventions are pulling in. This is way more about the bragging rights then anything else."

Susan nodded slowly, then got back to work stroking her pregnant belly as if expecting the blue orb to suddenly make like a magic eightball and provide her with the answer she wanted. It didn't come but a least it gave her time to come to her conclusion. "All right, four girls, two boys, four hundred dollars." He pronouncement made she gave her belly one last rub for luck. "All right kids mommy needs six new pairs of booties. So where do I need to sit?" Reed patted on a particular gurney, and smiled. "Your carriage awaits my queen."

--

After Reed had taken the necessary pictures or whatever it was he had done to Susan, the other five sat around doing various things to pass the time. Susan was playing with the length of her fingers making them longer, then shorter, then longer, then shorter then longer again. Ben just flapped his wings a bit then actually lifted off and made use of the lab's high ceiling to do a couple of loop de loops and other ariel manuevers before landing again. Johnny and Medusa were playing a complicated version of rock paper scissors that involved Medusa making the shapes with strands of hair instead of her fists, but Johnny didn't seem to mind.

"Ladies and gentleman we have our answer..." Eight wide eyes transfixed themselves on Reed, waiting to hear his answer. "Unless I'm made some miscalculations, Susan your pregnant with four girls and two boys." Susan pumped her arms decisively turning to face her brother. "Lets see if I can do a little math of my own that's appropriate for the situation. Four hundred dollars at fifteen gets you sixty four is rounding things out in your favor, one thousand seven hundred dollar." Oh and you owe Medusa 214 dollars."

Susan had been doing the math in her head ever since she'd made the bet, so though it hadn't exactly been the kind of thing she could rattle off without on command was within her capabilities."

Johnny reached into a pocket of his outfit and pulled out his wallet. "Okay, okay, you girls are just lucky that I always carry at least 2K on me for mad money. God damn feminine intuition, should have known better then to bet against girls whenever something involving babies are concerned. By the way brother in law I'm gonna need my 'allowance' early this week you two can start by forking over the 250 the pair of you lost."

--

"Johnny there's something I'd like to talk with you about." Johnny resisted his urge to smile too broadly or jump for joy. Under his sister's (and everyone else's for that matter) direction he'd been playing very, very slowly with Medusa. It's not the easiest thing in the world to have to wait for the girl you were interested in to make the first move, but as the alternative (make that alternatives they'd all had their own particular one) was not pleasant to contemplate. So indeed he'd just generally acted like the perfect gentlemen until she finally asked him. Which given last time he'd checked a clock it had been just past six PM three days after the Fantastic Four celebrated their anniversary, it'd happened.

"Sure thing Medusa, what's on your mind?" Medusa leaned on several strands of her hair. "Well it's complicated Johnny, and in all truthfulness I'd just as soon not say it in here or anywhere in he Baxter Building. Is that okay with you?"

Was that okay with Johnny? Talk about the virgin dragging herself to the volcano! "That'd be just fine with me Medusa. I know just the right place to, and if you don' mind taking one of my cars, we should be able to get there in a half an hour at most." "That'd be fine." Johnny made sure not to whistle as he spun the necessary key around his finger.

--

Susan's head slipped under the door to Reed's lab (he'd done everything he could honestly think of to try and make sure she couldn't get in but it only seemed to delay rather then defeat her elastic body even in her current child bearing condition) with a slightly perturbed look on her face. "Reed have you seen my brother or Medusa around recently? Because I just noticed that I can't find either of them anywhere, and one of his cars is missing."

Reed just sighed as he spun his chair around to face. her. "You realize just for the record Susan you're his sister not his mother, to me figuring out where they are sounds like a pretty easy bit of deductive reasoning to me." Susan glowered at him. "Yeah I know, I know, but just do a quick little mental check to make sure okay? I've had two decades and change worth of time to realize just how stupid my brother is capable of being at times."

Reed decided it couldn't hurt to try. "If you insist..." Reed was very careful how he made use of his psychic abilities, because there was the distinct possibility that the person he was trying to contact was driving at the moment. /Johnny?\ /Not now brother in law, on the road with Medusa in the passenger's seat and you can tell my sister to keep her elastic nose out of my business, she asked me to go for the drive not the other way around.\

Reed shut of the connection and shrugged. "What can I tell you Sue? They're going for a ride together and he wasn't lying when he told me that Medusa asked him." Susan sighed and then shuddered as well. "Well I guess my little brother is all grown up, as long as he behaves himself I suppose I just have to live with it."

"Well Susan if you'd pull the rest of your body into the lab I've already thought of something that might help you take your mind off things." Susan's right hand snaked into the room under the door and she held it out flat before tilting her wrist downward dismissively. "Oh Doctor Richards, you really are too much. But you're right I guess I am being sort of a mother hen, if you trust Johnny to help us save the world I suppose I can trust him to take a drive with a pretty girl without needing to be lurking in the glovebox ready to spring out at the first sign of hanky panky. Just give me a moment to get myself together and then you can act like a good husband and tell me that I'm a silly little girl and worrying over nothing. Heck there's a new trick I figured out with my powers that I want to show you."

Reed nodded and smiled, when Susan said those particular words it literally could mean just about anything. He opened up the door for her mentally, and the rest of Susan's body came through in her other hand she held a small green can.

"This is the sleep spray stuff at the Wizard used to knock me out when he invaded the Baxter Building. I want you to give me a good sized blast of it." Reed looked at the can, looked at Susan as she stood before him, reminded himself that weather she fell forwards or backwards it wouldn't harm her or their children. "If you insist."

Reed took the bottle from her hand and sprayed her in the face with it. Susan's blue eyes rolled back in her head, and almost at once she collapsed on the ground at Reed's feet. Reed got out of his chair and got down on his knee to make sure that Susan was in fact fine.

It was just as he was starting to work a hand through her blond hair that suddenly those blue eyes opened again and the next thing Reed knew he was sitting on the floor with his arms pinned to his sides, legs pressed firmly to the floor by some portion of Susan's anatomy. As for Susan herself she was resting her chin on top of her intertwined hands a smug expression on her face. "Gotcha! Cool eh?"

Reed looked at the green bottle or at least where he had last seen the green bottle before Susan's coils had firmly encircled it. "If you handed me a can full of compressed air, which is a very real possibility until I'm able to conduct another test with it, then this would seem like nothing but a overly complex way of tricking me into your grasp."

Susan's head rose into the air and she began to rub itself playfully against Reed's chin. "Nope, that thing was still filled with one hundred percent pure knockout gas. So do you wana know how I did it?" Reed began to rub back as best he could. "Please Susan, name one time I haven't been interested in hearing you scientifically explain how you achieve some particular feat."

Other parts of Susan's body began to rub up against other parts of Reed's. "Yeah I know. Anyway luckily enough I'm willing to play to your science fetish because I'm so proud of myself for figuring it out even though is high school, if not middle school science at most.

Okay water is a liquid. Liquids are known for their habit of assuming the shape of their container, and while they can be compressed, doing something like that takes a large amount of pressure. But my elastic body can apparently exert enough pressure to compact the liquids within the womb which allowed me to pull off the trick where I didn't look pregnant.

Air is a gas, well okay as I'm sure you're about to point out 'air' is actually made up of a number of gasses and other stuff so oxygen the part of air we need to breath is a gas. Gasses are considerably easier to compress then liquids. Therefore if my body can exert enough internal pressure to compress liquids within my womb, compressing gases within my lungs should have be a walk in the park. So I took a couple deep breaths, stored all the air within my lungs and then compacted it so that there wasn't any external physical sign of it.

At which point I just let my lungs do their thing, except that they were holding way more oxygen then normal, so I only had to worry about exhaling through my nose and not inhaling. Which finally meant that I could take a face full of knockout gas and its only now that I'm coming to the end of this explanation that I'm actually starting to feel the need to draw another breath. Isn't that great Reed? With enough practice I'll probably only need to grab worry about breathing once every hour or so Before long I'll no longer need to worry about rags doused with chloroform, spritzes of knockout gas, or any of the other half a dozen other unfairly easy ways there were to take me out of a fight that you could pick up over your average pharmacy counter!"

True enough despite the veritable flood of words that had just left her mouth Susan needed only to pause for one ordinary sized breath before continuing. "So what do you think?" Reed leaned forward and kissed Susan on the lips. "I think it's simply fantastic."

--

Parked on a hill overlooking the city with a beautiful girl (with prehensile hair) in the passenger seat, it was hard to imagine life getting better then this. Okay it obviously could but it involved, said girl being with him in bed, but this was gonna be a fine place to start, because he was dam sure there was no way that tonight was going to end without him reaching at least second base.

"So Medusa, what is it that you wanted to tell me?" With cruel irony the earth chose that time to move instead of the about five or so minutes later when it would have been considerably more called for and all of a sudden Johnny's car was flying through the air, he transformed into the Mandroid and from there it was all instinct.

Rip off Medusa's seatbelt, smash, windshield, and hurl her through it, she could use her hair to land softly. And then the car landed upside down, the roof got smashed in and he got knocked out cold.

--

The first thing Johnny Storm saw when he managed to shake his head clear was his sister looking down at him and smiling. At least that was what he thought he was seeing up until the point that he realized his car was still upside down and just like he had expected in reality Susan Richards had a most displeased expression on her face.

"So care to explain to me how this happened?" Johnny shrugged as best he could. "I was not driving drunk and I didn't make the first move. That's all I can tell you from in here at the moment. I don't suppose you could help me get out of here?"

Of course while Susan might be pretty good at squeezing out tight spaces he doubted she'd be able to help him out of his current location and Johnny wasn't exactly sure where to begin tearing his busted car apart. Luckily she hadn't come alone. "I think we might as well just call this particular vehicle a loss..." Reed wrapped his hand around some part of his car and from the sounds that he could hear he was obviously tearing it apart.

After about a minute of him acting like a human jaws of life enough of Johnny's car had been torn free that he was able to get out at which point he saw that Ben had come along as well. Then he took his first look at the sky and shook his head in surprise. "Wow, you guys got here really fast. You weren't following me in the Fantasticar were you, because I think I disserve a bit more respect then that."

Reed shook his head as he reached into the mass of twisted machinery that one of Johnny's favorite cars had turned into and pulled out a small blinking device. "No. When I was working on your car I built in a special homing beacon that would start sounding if the car's chasse was compromised. That way you couldn't possibly have an accident in one of them without us knowing about it."

Johnny still would have preferred to have known about that beforehand, but it was better then knowing that his sister or some other member of the team had been watching them through binoculars just to make sure he didn't try to take advantage of Medusa.

Then he looked down and felt his jaw go slack. "Jeez I know I'm not the luckiest guy in the world, but does this place look like it got hit by an earthquake to any of you?" There was a strange line running through the earth that certainty seemed to look like the kind of thing that you'd see after an earthquake and to Johnny's surprise his kneejerk reaction got that oh so rare mark of scientific approval, a nod from Reed Richards.

"That's the only explanation I can come up for this either, though I've never heard of such a thing, and then there's this..." Reed pointed towards a 'foot print' in the that was located just before the origin point of the line of broken earth.

"Okay that just makes it official, I've got the worst luck ever, because Bigfoot has to come stomping way south of the Canadian border just to stop me from having s... ome wonderful time alone with Medusa."

It was a pair of huge foot prints that looked like some kind of giant hoof. Unsurpirngly there was no way that he was going to get two right in a row by chance alone. "I doubt that Johnny. Look more closely at the thing, they're much larger then any human foot prints that I've seen but I doubt that any creature could naturally have feet that leave marks behind like these. Whatever did this, it was wearing shoes, boots, or some form of footwear. And then if you'll follow me there's this.."

Reed walked off and pointed towards another odd set of imprints on the in the dirt. "Ben actually pointed this one out to me. I noticed it as well, but he was the one who was to recognize it. The imprints in the ground and the way the grass is blown about suggests that a helicopter landed here recently. So I think its safe to say that we're much more likely to be dealing with a superpowered human then any kind of monster."

Johnny sighed his mind racing with possibilities. "Do you think the Sandman might have gotten himself together and come from some kind of revenge on Medusa for betraying him and the rest of the Frightful Four?" Reed shook his head very slowly. "Its once again possible but not exactly plausible. I don' t think he'd be able to do anything like this, or would have left you alive but unconscious if he'd been responsible.

I think we're dealing with some unknown person, or persons who we haven't encountered before, and until we know more we'll just have to make do with what little information we can gather." Ben just sighed in irritation. "You know Reed there aren't may people who can say so little with so many words as you do sometimes. So what exactly are we gonna do about the guy who wrecked up Gearhead's ride and stole his crimson haired crush?"

Reed headed back towards the Fantasticar Johnny quickly followed him. "Well first we need to head back to the Baxter Building and make sure that Johnny hasn't suffered any injuries." Johnny vaulted into his seat in the Fantasticar. "I feel fine, and I don't need you to take apart my screws or check my oil to make sure of it. And the first thing I'm going to do when we get back to the Baxter Building is grab another one of my cars and go looking for Medusa and whatever creep is behind this!"

Reed and Susan exchanged glances and Johnny expected another reprimand headed his way but what actually came from Reed's mouth was something else entirely. "Very well then Johnny if we split up we will cover more ground. You search the city by the ground, Ben, Susan and I will stick with the Fantasticar. I'll try and acquire a mental lock on where Medusa is. Just be ready to contact us if you find anything interesting." "Yeah, yeah." Well it was about time that he got some respect.

--

Reed rubbed his temple, but smiled. "Ben, I'm picking up a reading from Medusa to the south west..." Ben tapped the Fantasticar's machinery a smile on his face. "Not a bad party trick and all, but you already got beaten out by yourself. The radar you installed into this thing just picked up a chopper, and from these readings I don't think they're doing traffic reports. Let me just kick this girl up a notch, there's no way some fool in a whirly bird is gonna outfly Ben Grimm with the best Reed Richards could build at his fingertips!"

Reed stopped looking with his mind and started using his yes, indeed the helicopter Ben was talking about should be close enough for them to see fairly soon. "Susan can you get us some kind of vissual confirmation?"

Susan smiled and curled her index finger and thumb around her eyes creating a mock set of goggles. "Your wish is my command husband. Now then, One X." She proceeded to click her tongue mimicking the sound of flicking through various lens settings on a pair of binoculars. "Two X." She clicked her tongue again. "Five X." One last click. "And ten X magnification. Okay then I've got a pretty good look. Unless there are some other women in this city who have knee length flaming red hair and wear purple outfits I think its a safe bet that we're barking up the right tree."

Ben gripped his controls a little tighter. "Well that's all fine and dandy, but does this rig have any weapons on it or are we just one big old flying target?" Reed began pressing buttons on his consol. "Well I didn't have any weapons as such since I figured that we'd be directly responsible for any collateral damage that would be bound to result. However, I followed the old principle about how the best offence is a good defence.

Remember the Fantasticar's shield is a complete 360 degree field, and it's virtually impenetrable, so we should be able to disable that particular craft simply by ramming it, though we should be careful since we want to make sure that neither of them comes to any sort of permanent harm."

Ben took another look at the helicopter and sighed. "Well not that I can't understand why you're against the idea of having gatling guns mounted on this thing, but do you think you'd be able to come up with something fancier then that before the next time we find ourselves in this particular predicament? Because I can think of plenty of things that'd be more fun then playing bumper cars in the sky. But since there don't seem to be any other options available to us, Susy I'd suggest you hang onto your kids because in a few moments their gonna know how pinballs feel!"

Ben did whatever passed for the Fantasticar's version of pushing the accelerator down as far as it would go. In no time at all the Fantasticar managed to pull level to the helicopter which was a midnight black color and showed no distinguishing features about where it had come from.

Susan got a decent enough look at the guy who was piloting not that it told her much. He was wearing some kind of silver headband over his brown hair, and he was over six feet tall and was incredibly broad of shoulder. "I'm giving you one chance to land some place you like now, or I can force you to land. It's your choice!"

The man responded by swinging his helicopter towards the Fantasticar, but just like Reed had suggested its shield activated in response. The helicopter bounced away with a noticeable dent in it, while the worst the Fantasticar's riders got was a slight bit of turbulence.

"Whata revoltin development. Ultra Woman, I'm about to do something that ain't exactly in the training manual and I could really use your help to do it. I figure the best way to cripple that chopper without harming my second favorite red head is for me to bring this thing down right on top of him. But for all the fancy gadgets your husband put in this buggy I don't see a camera that lets me see downwards among them. So if you could lean your neck a longways out the side and shout up what it looks like down there, it'd be a big help."

Susan turned towards her husband. "Reed would it be safe for me to do something like that?" Reed nodded quickly. "The shield is generated two feet away from the ship itself so as long as you keep your neck close to the ship itself you'll be perfectly safe." Susan nodded and stretched her neck off, while Ben pulled up and the Fantasticar up and began to position it as best he could.

Needless to say the pilot of the black helicopter must have realized what they were planning and began to shift his vehicle about as well however. Susan called out the most precise instructions she cold manage and Ben worked the controls with the smooth touch that showed even if he no longer needed a plane to fly, he was still a force to be reckoned with in the pilots seat.

"Here comes the comes the fun part Susy Q, I clip their wings you carry the bird to the nest." Reed chipped in as well. "Susan I'll use my telekinesis for what it's worth to help you hold that thing in the air." Ben tilted the joystick down and with the sound of grinding metal the Fantasticar's shield slammed into the helicopters blades and turned them into nothing but a bunch of scrap metal.

Just like they'd planned with its main mode of propulsion broken the black helicopter began to plummet and Susan stretched out her hands and started to wrap themselves around helicopter letting out a groan of pain as she did so. "Damn it, never had to lift so much before..."

Reed likewise was starting to break out into a rather severe sweat as he did what little he could to alleviate his wife's burden. "Okay you two lovebirds just keep that thing up in the air for about sixty seconds and I'll take care of the rest." Susan began to chew on her lip and extended her legs wrapping them around the helicopter as well, even though it didn't seem to do all that much to spread out the burden.

Ben meanwhile nosed up the Fantasticar as he headed towards a nearby condemned apartment building. Once again the air was filled with the sound of screeching metal as the helicopter barley managed to avoid slamming into the side of the building. Susan unwound her limbs and laid back in her seat actually huffing and puffing tiredness for once. "I just managed to hold up a couple thousand pounds of metal. Good to know that I can do stuff like that If I need to, now I'd appreciate it if no one ever asks me to do that again for any reason..."

--

Seeing that Susan was going to be just fine Reed gave his head one good shake to clear it (he'd only given what he thought he could spare, she'd been the one who had actually needed to use her body to try and keep the helicopter from plummeting straight to the ground) before he climbed out of the Fantasticar.

Ben joined him about the same time as the helicopters' pilot got out of his craft. "All right stompy, now's the time when you tell us who you are and what you're doing with Medusa, and maybe we'll only clobber yah into next week!"

The man crossed his arms and glowered down at them. "Gorgon answers to no mere humans. Medusa belongs with her own kind, and any human foolish enough to stand in my way, will taste the wrath of my kick."

What Gorgon did next could more accurately be described as unleashing the wrath of his stomp. He lifted up his right leg and salaamed it down on the roof, kicking up bricks and mortar as it left a trail behind it just like the one that they had seen by Johnny's wrecked car. Luckily it was aimed at Ben who leapt into the air and took flight, before the shockwave could effectively strike where he was standing.

:"Thanks buddy, now I won't have to worry about pulling my punches!" Reed of course had more pressing details on his mind. "Her own kind? What do you mean?" Gorgon raised his left foot. "You already know too much, begone!" The left leg came down sending a shockwave towards Reed.

He tried to dodge to the side, but wasn't very successful, and the ripples in the ground hurled him up against a billboard that collapsed down on top of him. His shields had dealt with much worse, but it still wasn't pleasant and it trapped him for the moment.

For the moment was the operative phrase of course, Reed could still move enough to activate his rockets. Their thrust proved sufficient for him to break free, then he deactivated his rocket as quickly as possible, but he still ended up more or less on the other side of the roof before he finally came to a stop.

Before he could even start to get on his feet again he heard that particular sound which had accompanied Gorgon's other two stomps, and then the roof gave out beneath him.

--

Susan watched what had happened to Reed, and knew that he'd be perfectly fine. But then she saw no particular reason to let a little thing like logic get in the way of proving why there was no fury in hell like a pissed off pregnant woman with superpowers.

Ben seemed to be more or less just hanging, back which Susan that once realized was probably the right move. Gorgon didn't look like the easily shaken type and if his feet could creature ripples in concrete, they'd probably wouldn't so much shatter as utterly obliterate a human skeleton.

So until Reed managed to get his act together, stopping him would apparently be up to her. "Okay, I've seen enough. Anybody who's going to kidnap women in this city is going to end up answering to Ultra Woman, and the fact that she was my friend is just digging yourself deeper into that hole."

Gorgon's face remained in its apparently dam near permanent scowl. "These human fools dare to send forth a pregnant woman to do battle with me? Bah, I could rend your womb with but a single kick!" Susan enlarged her fists and scowled mightily. "Your first mistake was knocking the floor out from under my husband. Your second even bigger mistake your making is taking me lightly. But your third huge mistake is threatening my kids!"

An oversized foot came down on the ground and a shockwave headed towards her. Susan just increased the size of her legs, and took one big step to the side. Then she shot out an arm to grab hold of the largest piece of rubble that Gorgon's kick had dislodged that she could.

This was followed by one quick spin to build momentum before she hurled the thing right back at Gorgon. The thing shattered against him, and though Gorgon took several steps back he wasn't knocked off his feet. The blow had apparently staggered but hardly finished him.

He grabbed Medusa from the helicopter and raised his right leg. "I am through dealing with you." He stomped down and rather then sending a shockwave the floor gave way beneath the two of them. Susan stretched herself over to see what was going on one floor below.

As she slipped her neck through that particular hole in the roof (there were a fair number of them now) Gorgon kicked one of the walls causing it to collapse between himself and Susan, but she could barely make out the sight of Gorgon stomping through the that floor as well.

"Susy we gotta get out of here, the way that cold hopper is stomping around this entire place could come down any moment!" Susan didn't even bother to face Ben despite the wisdom of his advice. "Thanks all the same, but I'm not gonna get out of here till I find Reed. You get the Fantasticar in the air again." Even though her legs were standing on the roof Susan could still feel Gorgon's next blow rocking the entire building. "Whatever you say, after all, I think you just gave a pretty good demonstration of why there's nothing 'delicate' about my condition. I'll make sure Reed's toy doesn't get hurt, you look after it's inventor."

Susan slithered downwards and headed for a large pile of debris that was located almost directly beneath another hole in the ceiling. She thinned her body down, and slipped between the bits of rubble. "Reed, you in here?"

Sure enough she got her answer almost at once. "Yes. Unfortunately I'm laying on my back so if I activated my rockets I'd probably end up going straight through the walls and finding myself a considerable distance above the ground, so I figured that it'd be easier to just try and slowly work my way out."

Susan worked her way over and indeed saw that Reed had about half a dozen large bits and pieces of rubble on top of him. "Well there's downside to the slow and steady approach in this situation..."

Before she could get any further the entire building seemed to rock back and forth. "That." Reed nodded slowly. "Gorgon's bringing down the entire building, with his kicks isn't he?" Susan nodded as she began to work as much of her body into the pile of rubble as possible. "How big a problem do you think that is?"

Reed thought for a moment.. "Well its either one big blunt impact or several smaller ones so you should be fine. My shielding system is holding at near full power, but I'm not sure if Victor ever built this thing while aware of the possibility that he might more or less have an entire building dropped on him."

Susan sighed as she quickly began to work her body underneath Reeds. "Well then I'll just wrap myself around you, the buildings going to come down around me anyway, so I might as well get my money's worth out of it. That would work, right?"

Reed nodded again. "The more layers between someone's body and any given impact the less force of the impact strikes them, simple physics. With you, my shields, and then my armor I probably won't feel a thing." Susan got to work slipping her entire body around Reed's. "You won't feel a thing? Where is the fun suppose to be in that?"

Another tremor ran though the building and Susan completed her encirclement. "Well now I suppose there's nothing else for us to do but play the waiting game. Well that or twenty questions. So is it an animal?" Before Reed cold answer the floor gave way beneath them.

--

Johnny had absolutely no idea what he was looking for other then hoping like hell he just randomly spot Medusa, or something else worth investigating. Then just when it felt like he couldn't have found any less productive way to waste his time, it happened. it went by so fast that he was only able to make out two factors. First of all pretty girl, second of all, she was wearing what amounted to a toga.

Now far be it for him to insult an ancient civilization that he bet Reed would have loads of information about if he cared to ask (which he most certainty didn't) but girls did not dress like that these days, and an alley in what looked like a pretty bad neighbourhood was not the kind of place you shot movies, which meant, well he wasn't sure but he was sure that one was or another he was going to find out.

He didn't want to come on too strong of course so he kept going for another block, pulled along side the street, got out, activated Reed's security system which would make sure just about anything (apparently that didn't cover miniature earthquakes) wouldn't be able to harm his car, and got out. Then he jogged back crossing his fingers and hoping like hell that the girl would still be there when he reached the alley again.

He was in luck for the second time that night, she was still there. He took a few moments to examine the girl when he wasn't barrelling past her at a couple dozen miles per hour. Oh yes, she'd totally been worth stopping for. She had green eyes, and orange (not like Alica, seriously actually orange) hair. Compared to Medusa she was more pretty then beautiful, but not for lack of attractiveness.

It was just that except when she was brooding over her past and how she couldn't remember it, Medusa had this aura about her of someone who was in charge of every thing. She also seemed the right age to have had a relationship or three or possibly one really serious relationship. But this girl seemed to be about Johnny's age and her green eyes seemed to be full of innocence as if she was just seeing everything for the first time.

"Hey gorgeous, so are you lost, or do you live around here?" The girl let out a squeak of surprise and took off running. She was pretty spry to, but luckily since he'd yet to get that jetpack Johnny had gotten plenty of experience at running himself over the last year of his life.

He was even gaining on the girl at the point when she suddenly slipped through a mostly boarded up doorway. This wouldn't have been such a problem if it weren't for the fact that right after she did it, the boards all caught on fire. Johnny skidded to a stop, then decided that this had officially gone from chasing tail to chasing clues on what happened to Medusa.

He transformed and then blithely brushed aside the burning boards. "Okay, I've gotten rejected by lots of girls and in lots of different ways. But I'll admit you're the first one who has resorted to pyrotechnics to get the message across. I mean you could have just told me you weren't interested and I would have listened."

The girl just staired at him in amazement, which was at least better then her taking off running again. "You've posses a hidden power?" Well at least Johnny could be sure that this girl spoke English for whatever that was worth, because it was pretty clear that she wasn't from around here, since there seemed like just about zero chance that any resident of the city (heck even any normal tourist) to have not noticed the Fantastic Four uniform he was wearing and what it signified.

"Uh yeah, if you wanted to look at it that way." Johnny didn't really think of his power as "hidden" these days, but whatever floated this girl's boat was just fine with him. "So your one of us?" Johnny had the distinct sensation that he just might be getting n a bit too deep. But if this was not a cause that was worth getting in over his head for then such a thing did not exist. After all, people with superpowers seemed to be popping up all of a sudden then maybe they'd have something to do with Medusa.

"Uhh yeah. My name is The Mandroid, but you can call me Johnny, Johnny Storm." The girl nodded very slowly and took his extended hand as he transformed back to his normal appearance. "Well then I'd like to be your friend Johnny." Johnny shook her hand eagerly, there as far as he was concerned there was no such thing as having too many good looking female friends.

"No problem there. So, for the record, what exactly are you doing here? I mean nothing personal, but you don't look like you've come from around here." Crystal looked around the place and blushed slightly. "Your right I'm not. The rest of my family are looking for my lost older sister, but they think I'm too young and inexperienced so they want me to keep me to just look after myself while they're busy."

Johnny looked around the larger room that the two had to themselves. "Ouch. Yeah, I know the feeling, I've got an older sister too. But seriously, they left you all alone?" Crystal put a hand to her mouth and giggled. "Well not exactly all by myself I've also got Lockjaw to keep my company." "Lockjaw?"

The next thing Johnny felt was more hot humid breath on the back of his neck. He hopped like hell that when he turned around he would not find himself face to face with another huge dragon that was about to beat the crap of him for its own amusement.

He turned around slowly, and gave a small sigh of relief. It wasn't a dragon, but it wasn't that much better either. It was the biggest dog Johnny had ever seen. It came up to his neck, and had to be close to six feet long. It sniffed at him, and Johnny instantly felt his skin go to metal as an instinctive reaction to perceived danger. "That's Lockjaw right?"

Crystal giggled even louder then she had the first time. "Yep. And you don't need to be worried, he's a big softie." Johnny forced his flesh to lose its metallic shine, and as he did so he decided now was as good a time as any to ponder just was up with superpowered girls and the superpowered pets they ended up with.

"I'll take your word for it. So how exactly dig dog breath sneak up on me if you don't mind me asking?" Crystal just smiled as she rubbed the giant dog's cheek. "Lockjaw has the ability to generate portal linking just any two places together which lets him move himself and others incredibly distances in the blink of an eye."

Suddenly a weird antenna thing on the giant dog's head glowed blue and Crystal stood up straight. "Lockjaw says that we need to return to the others." At least his sister ad been open about how she didn't really have a clue what exactly the Dragon Woman had been saying, but now was no time to start questioning the logic Crystal lived by. "Okay, so is he gonna do that teleport thingy for us?"

For an answer the blue glow became even more intense and a beam of energy shot out creating a glowing orange portal in midair. Crystal took Johnny's hand and guided him into it, and sure enough he found himself some place else entirely. "Woah, well I guess it wasn't too bad compared to flying coach." His orange haired companion just looked at him as if he was talking another language, and he sighed. "I'll explain it you later."

--

"You still good Reed?" "My armor's shields are down to 75 but other than that no complaints." Susan sighed as she began to unwrap herself from around Reed. "A simple 'yes' would have been fine dear... But then if I'd gotten that from you I might have started wondering if you hadn't taken a serious blow to your head. Of course now it seems like we're buried under twice as much rubble as when I first crawled in here."

Reed nodded again, though on the bright side, there was enough light filtering through the rubble that without Susan's body covering his eyes he could see pretty clearly. "Well I could activate my rockets and if I don't break through on one side I'll burn a hole in the other."

Susan carefully manauevered her body so that she had room to shake her head. "Nah, you just try and track down which way Gorgon took Medusa and try reach my brother, maybe he can head him off at the pass or whatever. As for the rubble, I figure as long as it is all bits and pieces I should be able to clear it out. If I have trouble then you guy can turn on the rockets come whatever particular havoc that brings."

Susan didn't wait for her husband to respond before she got to work. She started to flow through the rubble until she finally made her way outside the rubble. She looked down a it, and sighed, suffice to say there was a lot of it. "Look on the bright side Ultra Woman, at least you're not trying to hold onto a helicopter..."

That self pep talk given, she got to work. The rubble was all bits and pieces so it was simply a matter of wrapping an arm or leg around some piece of rubble, picking it up and depositing about ten feet to the side of its current location. After going about it for about a minute Ben landed the Fantasticar nearby. "Let me guess, our glorious leader is ingloriously trapped under there, or are you just playing a fun game of sort the rubble?"

Susan just nodded not bothering with words and Ben got to work picking up as many pieces of the rubble as he could. They toiled in silence for about thirty seconds before Ben spoke up again. "Ouch." Susan dropped the piece of rubble she'd been lifting. "Strain something?" Reed might be her husband while Ben was just her friend, but the former was perfectly safe so if the latter was hurt in some way it was a more pressing concern.

Ben gave one of his rare blushes, as he picked up another piece of rubble and hurled it aside. "Just my ego. I mean, I'm not saying you were a stick when we met, but I never figured I'd see the day when you could out lift me. I mean when Reed does it its cause of that fancy armor so trying to compete with a how much a guy can lift when he's in the driver's seat of a crane. But you're doing all that on your own."

Susan looked down at a particularly large piece of rubble, that probably weighed around two hundred pounds. She stretched out her right arm, wrapped it about half a dozen times and then easily hefted it into the air, and deposited about a dozen feet to the side.

"Yeah, well like Reed would say it's all about leverage. Because I can get my arm around something multiple times I've got it around is like having multiple arms on the job." Just to prove it wasn't a fluke (either to herself or to Ben she wasn't quite sure) she repeated the process. "If it'd make you feel better then I could go sit on he sidelines and work on knitting little boots for my kids like a good pregnant wife."

Ben picked up a significantly smaller piece of rubble and hurled it aside. "You ain't my pregnant wife Susy, and something tells me that the guys who's kids you are carrying would rather have you digging him out of this mess then twiddling your fingers or crossing a pair of needles. Besides if you weren't helping I'd have to move all of this myself and bruised muscles take a lot longer to heal than a bruised ego."

"You two realize that I can here you without even needing to use my powers don't you?" Both Susan and Ben looked away and then focused on their work. Fairly soon they'd managed to move enough of the rubble aside that Reed was able to force his way out. "Well now that that's out of the way, which way did that Gorgon creep take Johnny's squeeze?"

Reed's eyes went wide behind his mask as he heard the question. "I don't know. Before you even bother asking Ben I'll explain. I was tracking them mentally, except that then all of a sudden they vanished. It wasn't even as if they got outside my mental range, I would have felt them leaving. They were more or less smack dab in the middle of medium range, and then they vanished in the blink of an eye. It shames me to say I've got no idea how they could have done that, instantaneously moved from one place to another unless it involves some particular superpower or technoligy that I haven't encountered before."

"What about my brother?" Reed shook his head slowly. "Funny you should mention him. I saw this 'twitch' in where Johnny was as well. He's still in tracking range but I can't seem to contact him, and he went from one place to another far faster then he should have been able to." By the time he was done making that pronouncement Ben was already once again seated in the Fantasticar.

"I ain't exactly a genius like you Reed, but I can put two and two together pretty well. If something you can't explain seems to happen to Medusa, and then the exact same kind of something you can't explain happens to Johnny then its probably a safe bet that the two are related. Which means that we need to hustle our way over towards wherever the kid is before we've got no choice but to put what's left of him in a recycling bin. You give the directions and I'll have us there in no time." Susan and Reed exchanged looks, and then boarded the Fantasticar.


	13. Chapter 13

Swelling with love chapter 13, Separation: In which Jonathan Storm loses both girls and finds some perspective.

Johnny Storm pondered when exactly he had officially gone not just in over his head, but WAY in over his head. It could have been when he'd found out that his current companion Crystal could light things on fire by just willing it. It could have been when she mistaken him for one of, whatever it was she was.

It might have been the point when Crystal told him that she wanted him to meet 'the others' who all apparently had 'hidden powers' as she said. It might have been when it turned out that she had this giant dog named Lockjaw who could apparently transport from one place to another without warning. It could have been any of those things, but Johnny was pretty darn sure he hadn't been officially in WAY over his head until Crystal had more or less dragged him through one of Lockjaw's portals transporting to he had no idea where.

"I can't wait till you get to meet my family Johnny!" Oh yeah, one way or another this was going to get worse (probably much worse) before it got better. Crystal lead him through a series of innate doors until he was finally lead into a large open room.

Before them was a man green and white outfit complete with green helmet and black mask standing before a large block of stone. "So who is..." Crystal placed a hand over his mouth before she could go any further. But while he might not appreciate being physically silenced in the middle of asking an innocent question, the feel of her bare hand on his lips was a pretty neat conciliation prize, and she was kind enough to whisper and explanation in his ear.

"Don't disturb Karnak while he concentrates, he has the ability to detect the innate weaknesses in any object and destroy it with one blow..."

Karnak straightened up and with his bare hand karate chopped the block of stone, and the thing was cut in half. Johnny blinked a couple of times and whistled, which unsurpringly drew Karnak's attention. "So Crystal who is this new arrival?" Crystal bowed to Karnak before she answered. "This is Johnny Storm, he also has a hidden power."

Johnny decided that offending a guy who could split half a dozen foot tall slabs of concrete with his bare hands like something out of a bad karate movie was not the smartest move he could make, so he offered Karnak a friendly handshake. "Nice to meet you."

Karnak took Johnny's hand and squinted at it very closely. "Hmm, your center of gravity should be about here..." Then he gave Johnny's arm a quick twist making pain shoot up his shoulder before Karnak tossed Johnny aside with ease. Johnny quickly transformed his skin to metal before he hit the ground so the impact barely even registered. What did register however was what he suddenly found himself looking up as Lockjaw appeared out of nowhere with two considerably more humanoid shapes in toe.

The first was a tall broad shouldered man with seriously huge feet. The other was Medusa. "Sister you're back!" Johnny just lay there on the floor trying to work out what he'd just heard. Crystal and Medusa were sisters, he wasn't sure if that made his luck very good, or very bad, but something about the fact that he was currently surrounded by people with superpowers who he new virtually nothing about made him think it was very bad.

"Medusa, what the heck are you doing here?" Medusa had looked at him with pa in her green eyes. "Johnny you can't be here." Johnny slowly stood up and dusted himself off. "Okay, who the hell exactly are you people, what is going on, and for that matter where exactly are we?" The board shouldered man who had accompanied Medusa growled at him. "Blackbolt's decree is absolute, the Inhumans do not mingle with outsiders!"

Then he slammed his foot down and created something that looked very much like the miniature earthquake that had destroyed Johnny's car. Not that the knowledge did him much good as he went flying through a wall, why did it seem like that was happening to him every other week these days? Reed had his impenetrable armor, but he didn't seem to be constantly leaving Looney Toon imprints of himself all over the place. Well if he'd learned anything from tonight's series of ups and down s it was that life was innately unfair.

--

"With any luck we should be seeing Johnny just about now." No sooner where the words out of Reed's voice then unmistakable silver body was tossed through a fairly nearby wall. "Looks like we found him none too soon, Reed I'd suggest you leave the Fantasticar in hover, I'm gonna go see if he's okay."

Susan didn't wait for a response. She jumped out of the Fantasticar, transformed her body into a ball that plummeted down to the ground, bounced and uncurled itself over her brother's currently prone form. "Okay Johnny, now is the part where you explain to your big sister how this happened, and who did it to you."

Johnny just blinked a couple times and sighed. "Well, you know how life works sometimes. One moment everything is going great, the next one of her inlaws punts you through a wall." Ben got out of the Fantasticar, flapping his way down, while Reed jumped out his jetpack emitting a few thin streams of flame that slowed his descent down to a fairly reasonable rate.

As they arrived Johnny pointed upwards towards a nearby roof. "Speak of trouble with the inalws her comes some more of it..." Susan and the others turned and saw another Inhuman and Gorgon who was holding a large piece of rubble evidently only a moment away from hurling it down on them.

A rare flash of insight struck Susan. "Reed, blast that thing!" Gorgon hurled it, Reed fired, and Susan started stretching.

The concussion beams hit it and broke large square of rubble into two pieces. Susan snagged the chunks of rubble before they could hit her teamates, and then spun around like an athlete winding up for a shotput, except to a ludicrous degree. Ludicrous (and probably silly looking or not) it worked, because she mangled to ease off all the momentum that the thing had built up being hurled downwards toward them, and, then build up a fair amount of it headed in the direction she wanted, at which point she let go of them, tossing one chunk towards Gorgon and one towards some guy dressed in green who was on the roof with him.

Gorgon took his second Susan propelled chunk of debris to the chest that evening, but green clad man managed to chop through the block that had been headed his way like it was paper, letting the two halves pass by him on either side.

Susan undid the dozen or so twist she'd put in her midsection returning her body to its normal proportions. "Okay then, that should buy us so time, so who was the guy with Gorgon?" Johnny look up at her in surprise and then drew in a very deep breath. "I'll assume Gorgon is the guy with the huge feet who wrecked my car. His buddy is Karnak, and apparently he can do the kinds of martial arts moves they need special effects for in the movies. They're also apparently called Inhumans, whatever that means. And I've got a bone to pick with their boss when we find him. The guy calls himself Blackbolt, and he's the one who sent Gorgon out to kidnap Medusa."

It was at that point that a nearby wall suddenly reduced to rubble and a man dressed in a black outfit with numerous white lines decorating walked through the hole that he had just made. Johnny growled in irritation as he rose onto his feet. "Okay then I think it's a safe bet that's him. You guys keep the others off my back and go beat some kind of explanation out of Blackbolt even if he's got to weeze it through a broken jaw."

Johnny charged at Blackbolt, who just stood their the white antenna ton the forehead of his costume glowing orange with small flickering dots around it. Johnny let lose with the best punch he had, but Blackbolt sidestepped, it grabbed the metal arm in question, and easily lifted Susan's brother into the air before hurling him right back at them.

Susan at once stretched out wrapping herself around her brother to slow him down before something considerably harder and more painful stopped him. No sooner had she managed to slow Johnny down than he started to try and all but claw his way free from the confines of her body. "Stop babying me sis, I can take anything that guy dishes out just fine, he just got lucky and took me by surprise the first time around."

Susan released Johnny and stood there with her hands resting on top of her belly. "Oh really?" "You need to be careful Johnny. Blackbolt's antenna seems to be absorbing energy from the electrons around him converting it into ATP or some other form of raw biological power." Three very blank stairs were fired in Reed's direction. "He seems to be able to draw strength from the air around him the same way Namor could salt water I admit I've got no idea just how much energy he can channel but it could quite easily make him one of the most powerful opponents we've ever faced."

Johnny just pointed behind his older sister and brother in law. "Well then I guess I'm gonna do a little field test for you Reed, like I said, you two just keep Crystal's crazy cousins off my back and I'll do just fine." Susan twisted her neck around and saw that both Karnak and Gorgon had dismounted from the rooftop and were approaching the Fantastic Four.

She turned her entire body around as quickly as her gravid form would allow and exchanged looks with Reed. "So seeing as I'm apparently 2 and 0 with him I'll go for a third round with Gorgon while you tangle with Karnak?" Reed shook his head however. "I'm fairly certain I've formulated a strategy that will allow me to successfully counter Gorgon's seismic stomps. You handle Karnak Susan and Ben.."

Ben's wings were already flapping. "Yeah I know, keep my eyes peeled for a chance to help and don't go getting kicked through any walls. Though at this point I'm starting to feel like I should take a page out of Namor's book and carry a camera around with me so I can grab some snap shots of the only married couple I know who considers knocking supervillians around to be equivalent to spending quality time together." Ben took off and Susan stretched herself out curling her hands into giant sized fists. "All right assuming you're the type who would hit a pregnant woman give me your best shot."

She had to hand it to him, Karnak's best shot was pretty good. He preformed a complicated cartwheel, pushed himself off the ground, leapt considerably higher then she'd expected him do and brought his hand down firmly on her left shoulder before land gracefully and lashing out with in a backwards kick towards her left leg.

The left side of Susan's body went limp as a well cooked noodle and she fell belly first onto the ground, quickly twisting her neck around so that she keep her eyes on Karnak. "Even one such as you has vulnerable never clusters I can strike to at least temporarily paralyse your limbs."

Susan gritted her teeth but no matter what she tied to make them do her left arm and leg only flopped around like a pair of fish on dry land. Well Reed had warned her about overconfidence and she didn't intend to make the same mistake twice. "That's a lot better then anyone else I know could have done using just their hands and feet. But something tells me that I can give you a pretty sound thrashing with half my body tied behind my back."

--

"You four humans have been a irritating thorn in my side for too long. Here and now I will extinguish you for good." Reed just looked Gorgon right in the eyes. "You know, this would make an excellent time to actually try and explain why we all seem so intent on pummelling each other."

Gorgon raised his right foot Reed sighed. "Or we could continue to wail away on each other like drunkards in a tavern." The leg came down sending a miniature earthquake towards him, but Reed was ready for it. He carefully manipulated the light thrust setting on his jetpack to allow him to effectively hover a few feet above the ground as the force of Gorgon's kick passed harmlessly beneath him.

Then Reed repaid the broad shouldered Inhuman with a pair of 3/4th power concussion blasts. He had no way of being sure just how tough Gorgon really was, but he certainly didn't seem the type to be easily taken out of a fight. Sure enough Gorgon was momentarily knocked off his feet, but he quickly got back on them.

Rather then try to attack Reed directly this time, he kicked out at the wall he had been knocked against, causing a shockwave to travel along it diagonally right before that section came loose and fell on top of Reed.

--

Ben circled around watching the melee that was going on beneath him. Johnny and Blackbolt were more or less just knocking each other around, and even if Blackbolt seemed to have a slight upper hand there wasn't much that Ben felt he could do about it.

He saw the flashes of yellow as Reed fired a pair of concussion blasts and then managed to free himself from under the section of wall that Gorgon had dropped on him, so Mr. Fantastic was clearly managing to look after himself pretty well.

Susan wasn't doing too badly either, even if Karnak has scored first "blood" she was now holding her own pretty darn well, whenever it looked like Karnak was about to land a blow she increased or decreased the length of the limb so that even his blows only distended her limbs for a couple moments. That said, Karnak was also proving light enough on his feet that Susan wasn't able to land a good solid blow on him.

Then he saw some guy in a heavy cloak trying to sneak up on Susy and considering how focused she was on dealing with Karnak, she didn't seem likely to notice him. Well looked like it was time for him to earn his wings. Ben dropped out of the sky and grabbed the guy's neck before flapping his way back upwards.

"All right buddy, where I come from guys don't go sneaking up on pretty girls." Ben felt his grip on the guys cloak loosening, it was slippery as a grease pig, so he carefully locked one elbow around the guy's left arm and tore the cloak from the man's body. "There now maybe you'll quit squirming."

Underneath the cloak the guy had green scales, but had better things to do with his time then wonder about what exactly that meant. "You can't do this... I'll die." Ben tightened his grip slightly. "Don't worry your scaled head about, Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew ain't ever dropped an amphibian yet."

But the guy just kept fidgeting in Ben's arms. "Not... amphibian... can't breath.. air.." On one hand, the guy might just be trying to trick Ben into giving him a chance to get back in the fight going on down beneath them. On the other hand, if he was serious...

Ben decided that having caught him once he could probably do it again if he needed to. "All right then, but don't pop your head above water where I can see it.." Luckily the Inhumans had decided to set up shop on the dockyard so he didn't need to travel far to find a good sized body of water. He dove and then released his hold on the green scaled man who in turn dove greatly into the water. Then Ben did a quick arial turn about to see what had happened while he'd been busy dealing with that oversized fish.

--

Blackbolt knocked Johnny through ANOTHER wall and as he looked up he couldn't help but notice that his favorite Inhuman sisters were standing nearby where he had landed. He rose to his feet, shaking a certain amount of rubble from his body. "What is up with Blackbolt? We've been beating the stuffing out of each other all over the place, and I still haven't been able to get word one out of him."

Blackbolt slightly increased the size of the hole that Johnny made in the wall before walking through it, and Medusa finally provided him with some much needed exposition. "Blackbolt's voice is his greatest power, his merest whisper would destroy this entire building!"

Well if Johnny had to find himself getting beaten up by somebody with a disability at least it was a mute, he had no idea how he'd be able to ever claim he was a superhero with a straight look on his face if he'd been getting his head handed to him by a blind guy. "Okay so that explains why he hasn't said anything. But why did he send tall, dark, and ugly to kidnap you?"

"Johnny, Gorgon didn't kidnap me, he rescued me. I'm an Inhuman and I belong with my family, with my love." On second thought Johnny had just taken just about all the talking he was going to , he was ready to start throwing punches again. "Okay that's it, come on Blackbolt lets do this thing..."

--

"Hey Karnak remember how you mentioned that you could temporarily play havoc with nerves?" Karnak backflipped away from her right arm, but as he landed Susan's left arm suddenly rose up into the air and stretched out slamming into his chest as he landed. "Well I think you just ran out of time." Karnak winced but as Susan reached out to try and land more blows, he began to jump away from her, apparently he wasn't anywhere near as adept at taking blows as Susan was.

--

Gorgon heard Karnak's cry of surprise and pain as Susan's blow connected and then committed the most understand and forgivable of tactical blunders, he monetarily turned to try and find out what condition his friend was in.

Reed could perfectly understand that, and while he didn't particularly enjoy taking advantage of someone else's concern, he liked pointless combat even less. He nailed Gorgon right in the chest with a pair of full power concussion beams knocking him off his feet and back towards the fight that had started this particular melee in the first place.

--

Johnny and Blackbolt continuned to fight back and forth across the dock. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see that his sister and brother in law were both doing a pretty good job dealing with his opponents, so why was he sweating bullets just to stay in the fight?

"We must finish this before the Seeker finds us, Blackbolt Use the Master Blow!" Johnny scoffed to himself, Master Blow, on how corny could you get? Blackbolt held up his hand and the orange energy that was flickering around that antenna of his suddenly swirled around his right arm, and then he drove it into Johnny's gut. Ouch...

--

Everything seemed to stand still after that. Blackbolt turned his back on Johnny, and Johnny just sort of teetered on his feet, but he didn't fall. "It is impossible, no living being could weather the Master Blow and remain standing, strike again Blackbolt!" However for his part, Blackbolt slowly raised his hand, and then he collapsed. Karnak bent down and hefted him onto his shoulders, sighing in the process.

"Blackbolt must have used up most of his energy, he must return to the Great Refuge to recover his strength Lockjaw, we must return home, even if Maximus the Mad is now King of Attilan."

Seeing that the fight was drawing to a close, both Susan and Reed were keeping their distance, not wanting to throw any fresh fuel on a fire that was now only smouldering for the most part.

There was an orange glow and then suddenly a huge dog appeared in their midst along with Crystal and Medusa. Blue energy glistened on its forehead, and then a shimmering orange portal opened in midair. Karnak was the first one through it carrying Blackbolt on his shoulders. Gorgon followed second. Crystal looked at Johnny with wide eyes, but Medusa just wrapped several strands of hair around the shorter woman's chest, and walked through he portal, pulling Crystal through it as well.

Then Lockjaw jumped through it and the portal began pale orange. It was at that point that Johnny slowly started moved again, heading towards the portal, his intention obvious. "Johnny no!" Susan stretched out her arms, wrapping them around Johnny's before once again going down on her belly as she anchored her legs around Reed's armor for purposes of leverage. But Susan's brother wasn't about to let a little thing like common sense stand in his way. "I'm not losing those two again!" He reached out, and grabbed hold of Susans left arm and pulled for all he was worth.

Susan let out a grunt of pain, that special nerve deadening blow that Karnak had dealt her was still playing havoc with the left side of her body, her left arm went limp and then Johnny started running. Susan's right arm tried to hold him, but it wasn't enough.

As the portal became opaque, almost invisible, he jumped through it, and then it vanished the portal turning disappearing a few moments later, leaving Susan's arm holding onto empty air. She slowly pulled it back and felt her neck lowering itself until it hit the ground. "My brother had better still alive when I find him..."

It was at that point Reed turned his attention towards the cause of a strange hissing sound. "Susan, unless I'm much mistaken one of Gorgon's kicks must have ruptured a gas main which means that we should be getting out of here first and worrying about how Johnny si doing wherever he is second." Ben landed and pointed a finger upwards at a large reddish shape that had suddenly appeared in the sky. "That might be true, but why exactly don't we worry about whatever that thing is first?" Before Reed could answer a pinkish colored clear cylinder extended from the bottom of the thing, and they found themselves being lifted into the air at an incredible speed. "It must be some kind of tractor beam."

Even though it did absolutely nothing to affect his position Ben still flapped his wings in irritation. "A tractor beam? Well the world must coming to an end, because I actually understood something technical you said!" Looking downwards Susan could see that a spark apparently reached that gas leak somehow because a large fireball inflicted even more property damage to the already pretty thoroughly trashed section of the docks, but given everything it had already been put through it was unlikely that there was anyone who had still been hanging around to get hurt, which was actually a pretty big comfort to her.

A hole opened in the bottom of the red ship and the three were drawn upwards into it, at which point the tractor bream cut off, and the three were unceremoniously dropped to the floor. Susan let out an "oof" of surprise as she landed on her belly once again tonight (she'd have to ask Reed to dig up the name of some ancient deity who was known for being responsible for safe pregnancies, or just pregnancy in general so that she could thank them for her powers consider how much physical trauma she'd found herself putting her kids through) but she quickly managed to straighten up and sit down, even if she still felt a bit silly with her pregnant belly having more or less completely confiscated her lap it was still more dignified then laying on top of it.

Looking around the entire place seemed like the bridge of a ship from just about any science fiction series that you cared to name. "So where are we now? By the way, Reed do you remember when we thought we'd get to spend tonight in the bedroom up until the alarm went off on Johnny's car? How exactly has its been less then three hours since then? Oh and you can answer the question in the order they were asked."

Reed looked around for a moment and then he had his answer. "I can't be sure, but I think its as safe a bet as any that we've been rescued by the ones we heard the Inhumans call The Seeker." A figure dressed in red moved towards them riding what Susan would best describe as a floating pogo stick.

"You are correct human. My orders were only to gather the lost Inhumans and return them to where they belong, but it is thanks to you efforts that I managed to recapture Triton, so as we are a peaceful and honorable people I decided one good turn disserves another." As he said the word "Triton" he pointed towards a large sphere of a material that looked like glass within which a human sized being covered with green scales floated.

Ben looked at the captured Inhuman much more intently then Susan or Reed did. "Well considering that the last time I saw this guy he was headed two thousand leagues under the sea I guess you must have been mighty dedicated to find him."

The Seeker just nodded calmly. "Of course. King Maximus would hardly be pleased to have one of his subjects exposing themselves to harm by traipsing about outside the Great Refuge." Susan felt her tongue and mind start to form the question "Is that the same Maximus as Maximus the Mad" but stomped on it firmly, even going so far as to stretch her lips so that they created an interlocking, air tight seal through which she couldn't have gotten words out even if she wanted to.

None of them had any particular idea what was really going on tonight and The Seeker seemed if slightly overbearing and arrogant, had saved them the somewhat significant difficulty of dealing with that fireball that they just barely managed to avoid being caught in.

"You Inhumans, if what I've seen from my time with Medusa is any indication you're clearly terrestrial in nature, but how could a race of superpowered beings with such advanced technoligy come into being without the rest of humanity realizing it?"

The Seeker ran a hand through his thick dark mustache. "Very good. Far too many humans would cling to the foolish notion that they are the only intelligent life on earth. Millenniums ago, we Inhumans were created as a result of genetic tampering by an alien race known as the Kree.

With their aid we had created an advanced society back when your ancestors were still attacking one another with clubs. The science of genetics was our pride and joy, and we managed to isolate a substance known as the Terrigan Mists which grants us Inhumans our unique and incredible powers, but would prove quite fatal to you humans.

However we were not then nor have we ever been a warlike people interested in expanding our borders, and so ordinary humans soon outnumbered us many times over. We could have driven them back with our superior technoligy had we wished to, but it deemed wiser simply to use our technology to create the Great Refuge to protect our home, the city of Attilan from all outside threats. Within it, we Inhumans have, and under our wise kings rule will continue to live peacefully safe from humans who might wish to abuse our powers or technoligy."

Reed looked very closely at The Seeker. "You realize the innate flaw in that logic? You yourself admit that humans outnumber you Inhumans, and though you might have had alien tutors and technology to start with, it'd be foolish to imagine that you can continue to out invent the entire human race. As for your powers, if you observed our most recent battle then you must have witnessed that were able to hold our own."

The Seeker just shook his head. "That is a matter for King Maximus to deal with, not you. His benevolent hands will insure that we Inhumans remain free and safe." Triton began to bang his scaled hands against the walls of his tank. "Free? Under Blackbolt's rule I was free to explore the waters of the human world!" The Seeker drew closer to the tank that was holding Triton. "But Blackbolt is no longer king of Attilan. It is now the will of Maximus that you must bow to."

Triton let loose with a growl of rage. "I would rather die!" He slammed himself against the tank and it shattered, which left him flat upon on the ships floor, emitting unpleasant sounding gasps. Susan couldn't help but wonder how long did it take the human body to drown if it couldn't get oxygen, and was that time in any way comparable to how long it would take Triton to die if he couldn't get water to his gills.

She wasn't he only one pondering that question however. "Do you have any sort of water generation system or do you intend to just let him perish?" The Seeker's voice was utterly emotionless. "Of course we have a water generation system human, but Triton must be surrounded by water to breath, and we have not the resources to flood my entire ship. We offered him safety and he rejected our offer, so he will have to live with the consequences of his actions.

Susan looked down at the green skin Inhuman, taking actions were clearly more important then talking at the moment and luckily she'd just realized with a blinding clarity what actions she could take. She elongated her entire body, slipping it underneath Triton's, then turning up the sides of her body effectively creating a large cup with Triton resting inside, trying to capture as much of the water that had spilled out of the tank as possible.

"Well then whatever those water generation systems are I suggest using them. I may only be a human woman, but I'm a pregnant human woman, and that means I know a thing or two about keeping beings that can't breath air safe within my body. I'm not used to doing it with ones as large as him or who aren't related to me by blood, but as you might be able to guess, I'm the flexible sort. So start pouring water into me or do I need convince my water to break while I'm only six months along so that he can wet his gills on that?

The Seeker lazily gestured towards one of his minions who let loose with something that might as well have been a hose. Soon enough Susan was filled to her liking and she stretched out even further to fully encircle Triton to make sure he couldn't get out. That of course made it something of a goldfish in a plastic bag problem, but that was still a problem which was less pressing then the goldfish on dry land one.

"Very well then, I suppose Maximus will wish to see all of his countrymen returned alive however foolish they are. Direct this human to one of our holding cells and fill it with water so that we can be sure that Triton can not escape."

--

Once they were sure that Triton was safe the Seeker "beamed down" the members of the Fantastic Four that he'd taken on board. Once again Susan failed to land on her feet, but at least it was her backside instead of her belly this time around. The Seeker's ship started moving, and vanished from sight very, very quickly.

Ben watched it go and shook his head. "Well what now? We know everything about those Unhumans, but where they stashed our favorite bucket of bolts?" Reed took of his metal mask, and smiled. "Well Ben, while the Seeker was distracted making sure that Susan properly moved Triton into a holding cell, I was attaching a homing device to his ship. It feeds the ship's location into the Fantasticar and will let us follow them to the ends of the earth, figuratively or literally..

Luckily while I'm still working on the second version of the Pogo Plane, I have upgraded the Fantasticar to make it suitable for extreme long distance travel." Reed made the necessary hand motions and the Fantasticar landed gently nearby. He then got into his seat and the others joined him in their seats. "So how does this work?"

Reed pressed a button on his control panel. A moment later, metal shutters shot out over their seats. Rather then try to communicate them vocally Reed switched over to direct mind to mind communication. /These shutters will protect us from the innate pressure that'll accompany us moving at extreme speeds across large distances.\ Then the shutters suddenly retracted. "I'll take us back to the Baxter Building first so that we can actually grab a quick meal and relieve ourselves since as you might notice the Fantasticar is somewhat lacking in certain facilities to put it delicately.

By the time we're done with that the Seeker should have reached Attilan wherever it is, I'll program the destination into the Fantasticar, and then we can be off for it at several times the speed of sound."

--

Johnny fell to the floor and looked around he didn't see Crystal, Medusa, or any of the other Inhumans. He seemed to be in some weird hallway with brown floors, purple walls and ceilings covered with weird diagrams, like circuit boards or something. "Hey anybody out there?" He got absolutely no answer back to that question.

Apparently jumping through the portal as it was falling apart had left him some place other then where the other Inhumans had gotten to, well in retrospect that was just fine with him. At least it was as long as he was actually in Attilan. So he just needed to track them down, and for right now keeping his metal skin up was deffiently the right move since he had no idea what he'd run into next and with what powers they'd have. But for the moment the key thing was that he just start looking, because the sooner he started looking, the sooner he'd find something.

--

Crystal sat in the middle of her old room in Attilan and sighed as she leaned against ran her hands through Lockjaw's fur.. It should have felt better then this to be back home, to have her sister back. So why didn't it?

Probably because of that knowledge that was slowing eating her away from the inside that Maximus was king. She didn't have the heart to leave her room and see exactly what changes the cities new ruler had wrought upon it while she'd been away. Hopefully she wouldn't have to either. Once Blackbolt fully finished regaining his strength, would even Maximus be foolish enough to try and stand between the rightful ruler of Attilan and his crown?

"I don't understand why we couldn't have just explained ourselves to Johnny and his friends. They seem like exactly the kind of people who would be useful to have on our side, and would be likely to take it as well." Medusa shook her head as she sat on one end of a couch that Blackbolt had more or less collapsed on, orange energy flickering faintly about his head as he worked. "They were good friends, too good to reward them with only more trouble for agreeing to look after me."

Gorgon echoed her nod, raising his left foot, but the realizing where they were, lowered it softly. "Besides, it is a dark day indeed when require the aid of humans to gain what is rightful ours."

--

"You will receive what it is 'rightfully your's' indeed Gorgon!" Maximus the Magnificent was an Inhuman of moderate height, black hair and greenish blue eyes. He was currently wearing a complicated green and black outfit, and most importantly the silver crown of Attilan sat upon his head.

Apparently Medusa had finally been returned to The Great Refuge and likewise her memory had been returned to her. How splendid, after all, it would never do for him to have a queen by his side who had no idea of the importance of his position!

"King Maximums I have returned with Triton." Maximus turned to face his trust Lieutenant, The Seeker. "Excellent, excellent. Then the entire Royal Family will bare witness to my great triumph!" Maximus wrapped his hands as far as they would go around the invention he had been working on since the first day the silver crown had come to rest upon his head.

"When my Atmo Gun saturates this entire world's atmosphere in Terrigen Mist every single pathetic human will be eliminated in the blink of an eye and finally the Inhumans will no longer have to huddle here in the Great Refuge like pathetic rodents! It is still charging, but it hardly matters, there is nothing anyone can do to stop me..."

"What about your older brother?" Maximus gave a low moan of discontent. "We know where he is resting. Release some Alpha Primitives in that area of the Great Refuge, that should keep him suitably occupied while I do what he never had the stomach for." "But sire, the Alpha Primitives fight to the death!" Maximus just chuckled not even bothering to glance in his subordinates direction. "Well then, I guess I'm about to become an only child!"

--

A wild untranslatable yell filled the room a few moments before the tramping sound of feet on the ground filled the air. The members of the Inhuman royal family who had been calmly relaxing only moments ago now rose swiftly to their feet preparing for battle. A strand of Medusa's hair shot out and tenderly wrapped itself around Blackbolt's wrist. "Don't do it, you haven't fully recovered your strength..." Blackbolt shook his wrist free however and as the swarm of growling Alpha Primitives began to stream into the room his antenna glowed.

Blackbolt took flight and proceed to hurl himself down the center of the mob of disciplineless Alpha Primitives, seeking to break their momentum, and he was successful to a certain degree. Gorgon though still not about to damage the Great Refuge with his seismic kicks was more then ready to grab as many Alpha Primitives as he could and knock their heads together. Karnak for his part wadded into the stream of foes dispatching one after another with expertly placed punches and kicks.

Medusa manuevered herself so that she stood between her younger sister and the approaching danger, using her hair to easily ensnare and toss aside any who tired to approach her. For her part Crystal carefully aimed and then let loose with one bolt of lightning after another, shocking the barbaric Alpha Primitives into submission.

--

Maximus watched the proceedings and slowly scratched his chin. "It seems that I overestimated the Alpha Primitives. No matter. They were so very foolish to return to one of the rooms they used to occupy before these renegades left the Great Refuge. Did they not consider that I would have taken the precaution of arranging certain precautions for just that possibility?"

He carefully estimated the arrangement of those who might seek to unseat him from the throne of Attilan and then pressed a button causing a large opaque dome to drop down on top of them, separating them from the remaining Alpha Primitives. "Yes, that should hold them until I am ready to present my future queen with the grandest engagement jewel of all, this entire world!"

--

Johnny followed the sounds of fighting and raced in its direction. As he entered into the room and three ugly hairless ape like monster that were a little over five feet tall charged at him. Paunch to the nose one of the things in the nose, punch the next in the gut, chuckle inwardly as he barely felt the third one's fist impact against his metal covered face, kick him so hard he flew a couple feet before landing.

That momentarily distraction over and done with, he took the time to fully consider what was going on. It seemed like his two favorite Inhuman sisters, and all of their crazy relatives were trapped inside some giant glass dome with several more of the weird ape like things laying on the ground around them.

Figuring that hopefully they'd be grateful enough that he'd freed them that they wouldn't strip him down to the wires, he swung at the dome with all he had. Unfortunately the impact only made a slight ringing noise. Johnny raised his right slightly hand and prepared to take several random swings at the thing when he found himself face to face with Blackbolt on the other side of the dome.

The silent Inhuman raised his own right hand while he pointed with his left. Johnny wasn't exactly a whiz at charades but he got the idea. The two swung at the thing from opposite sides. For reasons that Reed probably would have a lot of fun explaining, being attacked by a powerful force from both sides at once was more then whatever the dome was made out could handle and when they pulled their hands away they'd made a good sized hole in it.

Johnny grabbed one edge of the hole, Blackbolt the other and they started pulling, in no time at all the hole was wide enough for even Gorgon to escape through and at that point Johnny finally planted his hands on his hips as he faced the Inhumans. "Seeing as I'm so far down this particular rabbit hole that the March Hare is trying to sell me a timeshare, would somebody please finally offer me an explanation about what exactly has been going on during the last twenty four or so hours of my life?"

--

/Touch.\ /Susan what are you doing?\ /Touch.\ /Susan, what are you doing?\ Somehow Reed could guess that she was smiling even though the two were completely out of sight of one another within their enclosed compartments. /I start to remove the top half of my uniform allowing my swollen belly to slosh a few moments before you catch sight of my lusciously large breasts.\ There where things that a man could do without hearing in his head, and Reed truly wished if that last line was one of them.

He was tempted to reiterate his question for a third time but decided to just stay silent of both voice and thought. Sure enough erecting a mental brick wall drew a slightly more logical response from his wife. /Jeez, the game isn't any fun if you're not gonna play.\ /Well I'd be more likely to play if I knew the rules.\

Reed was fairly sure that he could hear Susan slamming her head on her control panel, even if that shouldn't have been actually possible. /Wow, the not masturbating thing I could believe since it'd be a waste of your valuable time, but come on how is it that the same guy who could create kinky death traps for me hasn't ever heard of phone sex?

It's pretty simple, two lovers are separated by a particular obstacle to actual physical interaction interact with one another through a means of communication that only they can hear and describe what they're doing in an attempt to get the other off. Usually it's a long distance instead of metal shutters that separated them, and usually they're communicating actual phones, hence the name, but I figured it'd work just as well this way.\

/Susan, you do realize that as we get closer to the Great Refuge Johnny might be trying to contact me mentaly?\ /Well then we'll just play until you think you can contact him, how does that sound?\ /I every so gently cup your magnificently swollen breasts with my hands.\ /Well aren't you a quick study?\ /You've only noticed that particular fact just now?\ /Good point. I open my mouth and allow my tongue to flow down your body before slowly wrapping it around...\

--

Johnny took a deep breath. "Okay, let me make sure that I've got this all right. First off Medusa, you and Crystal are sisters." The two green eyed women nodded, granted Johnny had gotten that part down before he'd come through Lockjaw's portal to Attilan. "Okay then, now Medusa you and Blackbolt were in love, and Blackbolt was the king of this place." More nods.

"But Blackbolt had this whacko brother, which is subsequently why he's known as Maximus the Mad right? Now Maximus didn't like the fact that he wasn't king but since I can attest to the fact that Blackbolt isn't exactly the easiest guy to take down in a fight, he decided to take a sneaky approach to it instead.

So Maximus who's not only crazy, but also crazy like a fox or at least a mad scientist, whipped up this special amnesia dust, or whatever. He sprayed Medusa with it, and she lost his memory then he dropped her off in the middle of nowhere. Blackbolt who is literally more in love with you than he can say, decides to give up his throne to chase after her.

And subsequently while he and the rest of you guys are busy trying to find her, Maximus takes the control of this place. And now that you've managed to find her, get her back and she's got her memories back Maximus isn't happy about it, once again right?" Yet another round of nods.

"Okay, and we suspect that he just dropped a giant trap on you guys, and a whole bunch of these Alpha Primitives which I'll assume are the generic evil minions you have in these parts. Which brings me to my conclusion, if there's one thing I learned growing up its that sometime younger brothers can do some pretty stupid things. Though personally while I might have done a lot of stuff which drove my sister up a wall, I never kidnapped my older siblings love interest.

So that leaves me with just two questions. Firstly, Blackbolt clearly you were much further along with Medusa then I ever got, and you saw her first, I'll take a page out of Namor's book and bow out gracefully before things get awkward between us. A moment of silence for my grief..." Johnny waited exactly one moment. "So Crystal, to the best of your memory do you have a husband, boyfriend, etcetera, etcetera, who I need to be worried about competing with, and also do you know if you're suffering from a current bout of amnesia or any other problems with your memory?"

"No to all of those." Johnny smiled. broadly. "Okay then, that'll be a wonderful thing to contemplate once I get around to the resolution my second question. "Am I the only one who thinks that we need to slap, pound, pummel, or otherwise impart a lesson into Maximus' head by means of blunt force?

--

As it turned out Johnny was. The rest of the room wanted to take one last pot shot at diplomacy. Personally considering that he'd finally gotten around to taking part in a fight between two groups of superheros (or at least two groups of superpowered people with equally good intentions) he did not exactly have high hopes for diplomacy revolving anything with the actual villain of the story.

But he'd had more than enough experience at being told to follow someone else's plan to raise much of a fuss now. No sooner had the entered the big (big, big) throne room of Attilan then Johnny caught sight of (if crowns were anything to judge by) Maximus the Mad.

Johnny relaxed slightly since evidently unlike Victor Von Doom, or Reed Richards (though in all fairness the second example was nothing more than extenuation of the first) Maximus didn't have a suit of high tech armor to go with being crazy brilliant, so if this did turn into a fight given that Maximus didn't have any handy goons to throw at them, it'd probably be over pretty quickly.

"It is ever so good to see you dearest brother, especially after your long and harrowing departure from these hallowed halls. Words can not describe the grief I would have felt if the recent unfortunate accident with the Alpha Primitives had prevented today's joyous reunion."

It was all Johnny could do no to snort at how thickly Maximus had laid it on, evidently he wasn't the only one else in the room who shared that opinion either. Karnak was apparently going to be doing the speaking for the group and he thrust a finger firmly in Maximus' direction. "You were responsible for both incidents!"

A loud chortle filled the halls before maximus waved his own finger in Karnak's face. "Be careful what you say, such words could be considered treason. But then why should I bother examining your words when I have your actions? You allowed a human into the Great Refuge!"

Several crossed arms and silence was the only response Maximus got, but luckily he was more then willing to monologue to his hearts content. "Of course I suppose I could be allow the boy to live so long as he never leaves. After all it'd be a shame to mar the day of me and my lovely bride Medusa's wedding with copious amounts of bloodshed..."

Johnny uncrossed his arms, not because he was glad to hear that particular bit of news, but because it's very hard to punch someone with your arms crossed. Medusa looked at maximus with steel in her eyes for a few moments and ten turned her attention to Blackbolt with something else all together in them. "You are truly mad..."

Maximus managed a pretty fair shrug for a guy who was sitting down and clearly so whacked out of his mind that they'd need a rad map and GPS to find his way back to it. "Say what you like, but remember I am king, and our wedding is my royal decree!"

That was the straw that broke the camels back. Blackbolt's antenna glimmered with power as he calmly pushed Karnak aside and stepped forward. No words were needed, even just seeing one of his eyes Johnny could tell his intent quite clearly. So could Maximus (but then he was Blackbolt's brother and was getting a double barrelled blast from his pissed off older sibling's ocular organs) and promptly pressed down on a cleverly concealed button on his throne.

All of a sudden the walls behind him slid away revealing a great many unfriendly looking Inhumans. "Protect your king and seize these traitors my royal subjects!" Johnny quickly transformed his skin from flesh to metal. Just like he'd been asked he'd just stood there and been quite, so clearly no one could blame him for the diplomatic process having broken down.

--

Reed slowly set the Fantasticar down and the metal shutter's retracted. "This is obviously the Great Refuge, now if I can just pinpoint Johnny's exact location..." It was at that point that a very familiar silver colored human sized object was violently ejected out to a second story window in the process transforming a wall into more of a window.

"Something tells me that your eyes might be the best tool for that task." Ben took off flying and Susan took off bouncing with Reed running as fast as he could even though he quickly fell behind. As he arrived Johnny was starting to shake his head clear, apparently he had been only slightly dinged up by his less than soft landing.

"Boy am I glad to see you guys. I'd explain exactly what's going on but it's really complicated, so here's the short short version. Just clobber the hell out of any Inhuman you don't recognize. Oh and Sis could you give me a quick lift?" Susan nodded as her brother resumed his normal human appearance just long enough for her to wrap her right arm around him, lift him into the air, and hurl him back in the direction of the wall he'd been knocked out of, Johnny quickly transforming back into the Mandroid well before he smashed his way back into the room.

--

Susan lengthened her legs and once she'd slid into the room that Johnny had been ejected out of, she quickly found herself embroiled in the biggest most complicated fight of her life. Between the Fantastic Four, the Inhumans she'd seen before (who were now on their side apparently) and a whole bunch of ones she hadn't seen before, there had to be fifty or more different superpowered combatants.

Since this kind of giant melee wasn't exactly the kind of thing that Reed had bothered training them for, she decided to just play it by ear. In this situation that took the form of stretching herself around the room, wrapping her arms around any nearby Inhuman she didn't recognize and then giving them a good (like her brother Susan had spent a fair amount of time in Reed's lab practicing with pressure sensors so that she knew exactly how hard to slam if she wanted to knock them out, probably give them a concussion, but not actually cause them any permanent harm) slam against the ground.

Several of the "bad" Inhumans were using some kind of weird lazer guns, but after ending up taking one hit from them (her noticeably extended body made getting hit more a matter of when than if) she stopped worrying about taking a second, third, or fourth hit and so on. If they were using some kind of concussion generating technoligy then she'd spent enough time around Reed to know such attacks didn't really hurt her, or if they were heat based then they just weren't hot enough to do her any serious damage.

After disabling about half a dozen opponents she suddenly felt someone grab her legs. She turned (well twisted her neck) around in time to see Karnak yank her legs firmly, sending a ripple down her body that cause her belly to slam into three Inhumans who had been approaching him. He let go of Susan's body to quickly administer a few more blows to his foes before they could get back up.

On one hand they were still in the middle of a very complicated fight, on the other hand, crazy pregnancy hormones. Hormones won and Susan looped her body around so that she was only a few feet away from the green clad martial artist when she most disapprovingly cleared her throat.

"Did you just use my womb as a battering ram?" Apparently rhetorical questions weren't all that common among the Inhumans. "I was merely make use of all the tools that were available to me under the given situation, including his allies." Susan glared at him as she noticed another evil Inhuman starting to raise his weapon towards Karnak.

She extended her arm and punched him from halfway across the not exactly small room. "I don't know how it is in your culture, but how would you like it if I grabbed your genitalia and started swinging you around by them? I know it's not exactly the same thing, but it's close enough for our situation."

Karnak jumped over another Inhuman who had been sneaking up on him, delivered a spin kick that sent him flying towards Susan who for her part snatched him out of midair and planted him face first on the floor. "I was unaware that you're ego was worth more than our survival." Ben was currently involved in a fierce ariel melee with five other Inhumans of different shapes and sizes who all seemed to share the ability to fly.

Deciding to tilt the odds in his favor (or at least make the odds against him less objectionable) Susan managed to nail one with a hand that she momentarily turned into a giant flyswatter. "We probably wouldn't be in this situation, if you had bothered to tell us what exactly was going on when we first met, rather than throwing a giant hunk of masonry at us.

Speaking of which, I still don't have a clue what's going on beside we're apparently on the same side all of a sudden, but since Reed probably would have noticed if my brother was being mind control I'll trust him." While Susan was speaking Karnak calmly reached out and karate chopped a large pillar causing it to first crack and then fall on top of a weird plant like Inhuman who had temporarily grabbed Blackbolt with long vinelike arms.

"The very fact that you are close to our equals in combat is all the more reason to avoid letting you know all our secrets." Susan delivered a very firm punch upwards to an Inhuman who'd been running along the ceiling towards them. "Or, I don't know, you could have listened to us for a few moments. Would we seriously be helping you guys out if we weren't good people? Oh and on your left."

Karnak grabbed the Inhuman that Susan had warned him about, hurled him to the ground, and then delivered a kick who sent him skidding across the floor. "I was aware of him. You have some rather serious company coming up on your right." Susan twisted about, and sure enough saw that "serious company' was doubtlessly one way you could have described what was approaching her.

Another was a giant, snake, she had to be at least fifteen feet long if she was an inch, with long green hair the color of grass trailing a few feet down her back, and a mostly human (and by some indistinguishable category) female face. "Hello human, why don't we sssseee how ssssstrong you truly are?"

The female serpent suddenly spread a fold of skin by her neck, like a cobra's hood before letting loose with a line of green liquid. Quite a lot of it splattered all over Susan who began to return her body back to its normal appearance so that she could more easily scoop the stuff off of her.

"If that's the best you can do then you're not even going to be able to piss off the person who does my laundry, which in retrospect happens to be me." Susan would have gone farther except for the fact that at that moment she felt herself staring to go all bendy for lack of a better phrase. Her legs went weak, and she found herself collapsing on the ground.

A very large tongue began to flicker in and out of the snake lady's mouth. "What'ssss the matter little moussssie, didn't you know my venom issss sssso potent it can ssssstrike even through clothing. It doessssn't lasssst long, but by the time you recover you'll be insssside me!" As she spoke she lowered her neck and slowly slipped her forked tongue underneath Susan's body managing to lift her into the air with it.

However before she could properly pull her tongue (and Susan with it) into her mouth Karnak acted. He landed on top of the snake woman, and firmly slammed a bare hand against several green scales, causing snake woman's body to shake to such a degree that Susan fell from her tongue to the floor. "Let her go Nagaina."

Nagaina (the snake woman) turned her head about, barring her fangs at Karnak. "Do you truly believe that you're pathetic handsss can harm my ssssscales?" Karnak simply nodded, and then Nagaina's hood flared before she let lose with another stream of venom, though Karnak managed to carefully, jump slide, and otherwise avoid the paralysing spittle. "Sssstay sstttilll!"

Karnak just smiled up at his considerably larger opponent. "Come and get me!" Nagaina showed every intention of doing just that as she lashed out at Karnak who somehow managed to keep just one step ahead of her, before he did a quick backflip that least to a couple more down the length of her body before he landed next to Susan. "I'm going to need to borrow some of you..."

He reached out and grabbed hold of Susan's body just below her neck and then a similar position lower in her body. She might not be able to move but she could still talk. "You do realize that you just grabbed my..." Karnak selected another secondary handhold that was a little higher up. When Nagaina came a him again, he once again managed to avoid her, jumping to land on her neck. Then he started running, still maintaining his hand holds, and dragging Susan's elastic flesh with him. Nagaina once again began to coil herself up as she turned to face him. "You can't avoid me forever!" Karnak hopped off of the tip of her tail and smiled. "I don't have to."

Nagaina lashed out at him again but Karnak simply crossed the two folds of Susan's body that he was carrying with a flourish not unlike that of a bullfighter swinging his cape. Nagaina slammed into the unstable molecule uniform that had been stretched across her path momentarily leaving an imprint of her face in Susan's flesh but unable to escape.

Karnak for his part quickly dashed around Susan's body further entwining her around Nagaina before he finally managed to tie the two folds into a makeshift knot so that he wouldn't have to hold onto them to prevent Nagaina from being able to strain her way free. "You're not going to care the part that comes next..."

Susan glowered at him. "Thanks to you I currently have a large angry snake woman trapped inside me who is going to take all that anger out on me up until she runs out of air. I don't think I much care for the part that just happened thank you very much." Her sarcasm laced words bounced off Karnak like Nagaina did off Susan's body a few moments later.

He cupped his hands to his mouth so that even among the considerable din being raised by the battle there was at least a fair chance that he'd be heard. "Gorgon, now!" Gorgon tossed aside an Inhuman that he'd been dealing with and then really let loose for the first tome sending the after affects of another one of his seismic stomps in their direction.

It heaved Susan's mostly spherical body up into the air, and Karnak jumped after her a moment later. Apparently having done some math that even her husband would have been proud of, Karnak landed a kick against her side in just such a way so as to send her fling through the air before coming down on another group of Inhumans like a bowling ball suddenly landing amidst a gathering of pins.

On one hand Susan didn't enjoy being used in such a manner even by her allies, but then on the other hand considering she still couldn't so much as bat an eyelash it was hard not to take a certain amount of pleasure in still being useful.

--

Maximus saw that the battle was inevitably going to be lost now that these damnable humans had pitched in with his older brother and his band of traitors, so he turned and fled. The battle might be lost, but not the war of course! His retainers only needed to hold off those soft hearted fools for long enough for him to reach his Atmo Gun, and then let Blackbolt do whatever he history would vindicate him as the one who had allowed Inhumans to take their rightful place as rulers of the world!

--

Then entire throne room seemed to shake and Reed lost his balance. Of course considering all the buffeting that his shields had been taking up to that point (and the fact that they were still holding around 45) one little fall was nothing. As he slowly got back to his feet he only then realized why it had been taking him so long to find another opponent and or target in the fierce melee that he'd followed Johnny into, there weren't any left.

Johnny, Ben, Karnak, Gorgon, Medusa, Crystal, and Blackbolt were joining him in the process of rising to their feet but the Inhumans who's names he was unaware of were all laying face up or face down on the floor. Johnny seemed to be coming to the same conclusion, and pumped his arms decisively. "Way to go guys, we did it!" He then held out an open palm that Blackbolt just stared at blankly.

There were three main priorities that were vieing for control of reed's mind at the moment, firstly check that Susan (and by extension their children to be) were okay, find out what had caused the entire room to shake, and of course find out what exactly they'd just accomplished by helping Blackbolt.

Considering that unlike the others Susan was sill laying on the floor in a mostly spherical shape that first instinct won out as Reed headed over to her. The word "are' was no sooner out of his lips then she finished the sentence for him. "I'm fine, or at least I should be in a moment..." Susan began to unstrech her body much more slowly than normal causing a large unconscious serpentine creature that had been trapped within her body to collapse on the floor in the process. She slowly stood up ran her left hand through her hair, her right along her pregnant belly and then sighed wistfully.

"On second thought I'm not okay Reed, catch me..." In what must have taken a tremendous effort she managed to convince her body to fall backwards instead of forward and of course Reed had his gauntlet hands there ready to grab hold of her. She looked up at him and managed a weak smile. "My hero... I got nailed with some kind of nerve paralysing poison. My powers are helping me shake it off quicker then normal, at least I think they are, but at the moment my legs feel like hey can support me or my belly fully of kids, and sadly that's not exactly an either or proposition."

Reed nodded and couldn't help reflect that if it hadn't been for his mask now would have made for a very good time to lean down and kiss his wife on the lips. Sadly he had no intention of removing his mask up until he was one hundred percent sure that he wasn't about to find himself in the middle of another fight. Reed turned around slowly to face Johnny as Susan lay limply in his arms.

"You're apparently more knowledgeable than I am for once about what's going on, mind filling us in?" Johnny looked around the room at the copious number of unconscious bodies and sighed. "Well the simplest way I can put goes like this, if this was Robin Hood, Maximus would be King John and Blackbolt is King Richard the fourth." If Reed hadn't needed both hands to support Susan he would have pressed one of them to his face in embarrassment.

"I'll assume you meant King Richard the Third in the sense that they were brothers?" Johnny of course was less than appalled over his horrendous grasp of history. "Whichever King Richard was Richard the Lionhearted.

Anyway, I'll explain it in more detail when I have the time, right now since we've disposed of the castle guard we really should be tracking that villain down and seeing that he gets brought to justice. So who wants to lead the way?" Blackbolt's antenna glowed again and then he took of flying through the air with Ben training after him, Johnny and the others followed in close pursuit while Reed follow at a somewhat more sedate pace.

"Magnificent architecture to say the least..." Susan looked up at the ceiling and managed to make a slight nod. "Yeah, it's like someone decided to draw crazy lines all over the walls." "Actually I was asking about your breasts." "Oh really? Well then tell me more..."

--

Maximus spun about as with yet another mighty blow Blackbolt knocked the great metal door from its hinges, allow him and his companions to enter into the room that held the Atmo Gun. "You're too late brother, every single human has been whipped form the face of the earth!" Blackbolt landed looked Maximus right in the eye and the next thing he knew he was laying on the ground and looking up as Blackbolt took back his crown.

As if that wasn't bad enough then he saw who was accompanying him. "No, how can any of the accursed humans still be alive? I triple checked my formulas I checked the instruments, every since ounce of this planets atmosphere has been saturated with Terrigen Mist! It must be because they have powers, surely all of the normal humans have perished, behold the fate of your wretched species upon the countless minuscule cameras I had The Seeker plant while he flew about my world!"

Maximus pressed another button and screen after screen came alive with perfectly ordinary human activity, causing him to slam his hands on the control panel in frustration. "No, no, no, no! How is this possible!"

"I believe I can answer that." Unsurpringly every single eye in the room was quickly focused on Reed Richards as he entered with a revitalized Ultra Woman walking alongside him.

"Firstly I find the principle that there could exist a substance on earth that could be used to grant one select group of humans superpowers and yet be a deadly poison to all others. The differences in Medusa's 'Inhuman' genetic code seem simply too minuscule for such a possibility. From the moment The Seeker told me of the power of the Terrigen Mists I suspected that there ability to slay humans was little more then a myth, as having no affect on them at all would be a far more likely outcome.

Secondly, how long as it been since humans have set foot within the Great Refuge and been exposed to the Terrigen Mists? To expect a poison that worked thousands of years ago to still function properly upon modern day humans is shaky planning at best. Our immune systems have evolved and changed over the years, I'd be surprised if our lungs haven't started to grow slowly more and more used to the present of various impurities in present in oxygen given the regrettably large amounts of smog and other airborne pollutants generated by early less clean formes of fuel.

In short, even if you were able to develop and make use of the correct delivery agent, your package was of insufficient strength to affect modern day humans, an extremely predictable result given that you were trying to design a weapon to slay a foe you hadn't bothered to study beforehand.

Besides, if anything the fact that superpowers are starting to show up among ordinary humans would suggest that regardless of whatever the Kree did to your ancestors, it's still a case of convergent rather then divergent evolution. Animals with beneficial mutations tend to have offspring and pass them on those mutations. Most superpowers are beneficial to the chances of survival of the person who has them.

It's an all but inevitable conclusion from an evolutionary stand point barring some massive catastrophe that we'll find ourselves living in a world where everyone has superpowers of one sort or another. So in affect, there's no real reason that you Inhumans need to worry about hiding from us, is there?"

For the most part Reed's words were met with around of silent nods including a pair from the rightful King of Attilan and the crimson haired woman who stood at his side, sadly those who disagreed chose to voice their opinions in a much more dramatic manner.

Maximus hunched over the control panel before him like a miser over a pile of gold. "No! Not while I live will the glorious Inhumans lower themselves in such a way! I can reverse the polarity of my Atmo Gun to create a negative barrier that will forever separates us from the fowl humans!" Several of his enemies turned to him but it was too late for even as he finished speaking he pulled the necessary lever and pushed the necessary button

--

As it was activated a second time the Atmo Gun had blasted the roof right off of the room, allowing everyone who looked up to see some sort of strange mist was starting to swirl about them. Reed as usual was promptly thinking two steps ahead of the rest of the room's occupants. "Prepare to hate me Johnny."

Johnny just staired at his brother in law and teamate in confusion. "What are you talking about?" Reed knew that he had time for neither the long protracted fight or explanation it would take to get Johnny to leave Crystal's side. So he did the only thing he could. He wrapped his hands around the younger man leaned forward and activated his jetpack at full power. The two went careening across the Great Refuge like a pair of metal skipping stones leaving several large dents where they momentarily came down, but at least they were headed out of the quickly developing Negative Barrier.

--

As Reed and Johnny went skimming across the ground Susan with very long legged steps and Ben with his wings beating rapidly followed behind them as fast as they possibly could. Even that was only just barely enough for the four to pass through the ugly grey mist that was starting to solidify around Attilan, and moving through the stuff felt like diving head first through a foot of sand. By the time they stopped to catch their collective breaths the grey mist had turned into a grey dome that perfectly surrounded the Inhuman city.

After they had crossed through the grey barrier Reed had let upon the fuel to his jetpack and subsequently Johnny had managed to wrestle his way free from his brother in laws hold. Without saying a word he approached the negative barrier and swung at with all his might, but blow left the dome every bit as oppressingly uniform as it had been to start with.

Johnny threw several more punches, but each was every bit as ineffective as the first. Then he got down on his hands and knees and began to shovel through one handful of dirt after another, unfortunately discovering in the process that though the negative barrier might look like a simple dome, it extended beneath ground as well.

Finally he rose to his feet, slammed his hands against the negative barrier one last time, resumed his human appearance and spoke. "Damn it." Ben slowly placed a hand on Johnny's shoulder. "It could be worse." Johnny turned and shot him a truly withering stare. "How exactly could it be worse?"

Before Ben could answer, Susan did. "She could be dead. Up until that happens, there's always hope." Her eyes flickered in the direction of her husband for a moment, hoping that Johnny would get her point. If he did it still wasn't enough to convince him as his glare now shifted his glare so that it settled on Reed.

"That was low man, real low. Like subterranean low. What gave you the right to jerk me out here when I could be in there with Crystal?" Reed, reached up and removed his mask so that they all could see his own expression, which was surprisingly neutral. "I was acting in the best interest of the team, and possible a great deal more than that.

About a month ago, you were instrumental in saving us all from the Frightful Four. To put it as simply as I, or anyone else could, if you were in there then you couldn't be out here, and you can do a lot more good for the world out here then you could in there."

Johnny planted his hands on his hips and just kept right on glaring. "I didn't sign any contract on this, so I've got to ask at what point do I get to do what's good for me? Yes we have superpowers, yes I want to help people with them, but does that mean I have to do this for the rest of my life? Because believe me, this, this just sucks."

Reed nodded very, very slowly as he examined the negative barrier. "There's nothing that we can accomplish here one way or another. I used my armor to get the Fantasticar clear, so we'll be able to ride back to the Baxter Building, and once we're arrive I'll be able to seriously get to work on finding a way to penetrate this thing.

I promise you that it will be my main, my only scientific project unless something that represents a clear and present danger to us rears its ugly head." Johnny very, very slowly took a step away from the grey dome. "Normally I'd be all for that, but come on, you saw all the technological stuff they had in there. Do you really think that you'll be able to break this thing?"

"That's exactly the reason I trust that I'll be able to find a way to undo this negative barrier." Johnny was flabbergasted. "So you say the reason that you're going to be able break this thing from the outside is because you've got less technoligy to work with? Face it Reed, even you've got no idea what you're talking about this time." Reed leaned against the Negative Barrier, and sighed.

"Technically yes. However consider the following Johnny. Electromagnetic pulse technoligy if ever properly developed would be a dangerously powerful weapon on the battlefields today However, if somehow we had developed it back during World War Two it would have been all but pointless against the vacuum tube technoligy of the day. Sophisticated antimissile defences would be helpless against a large enough artillery shell since you can't count on a small counter detonation to stop it.

Sometimes as technoligy moves far enough ahead, it ends up leaving behind things that would seem like vulnerabilities if the very idea of using them wasn't hopelessly archaic. It's the scientific version of vestigial organs. Maximus no doubt designed this thing so that it would be proof against any technoligy the Inhumans have. But it might be some vulnerability to human level technoligy, I won't know till I get back to my lab."

Johnny held up his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Okay, okay. No need to fill up my hard drive with all the data you've got the subject. You say that you'll be able to come up with a way of shattering this thing, and I guess I trust you. But still, you meet a nice girl, turns out she's already got a true love, then you meet her sister, and then she gets trapped inside a giant dome. If life throws me a couple more ups and downs like this then I'm gonna loose my lunch."

--

As soon as they arrived at the Baxter Building, Johnny went to his room, locked the door and laid down on his bed looking at the ceiling. A couple minutes after he began this strenuous activity there was a rapping at his door which he had no intention of responding to.

However, the knocker was not to be denied. "Johnny, it's your sister." Johnny just glared at the door. "Beat it, I want to be left alone right now." "Tough." No sooner had he heard the words spoken outside his door then an blue blob began to slide underneath his door with all but contemptuous ease leaving him with only two choices: he could either jump out a window, or sit here and deal with his sister.

He decided that before he found himself once again faced with this particular problem he'd have a parachute on hand somewhere within easy reach, it'd make things so much simpler.

He sighed and rolled over so he was directly facing the blob. "I was being serious Sis, I do that sometimes." Once she'd slid her entire body into his room Susan quickly reformed herself, though personal Johnny would have preferred she'd just stay a blob. "I know you do, but to paraphrase what I said after the accident, if you insist on acting like a spoiled child, then that is what I'm going to treat you like."

Johnny glowered at her. "At least when we were growing up I could lock my door and count on you having to stay on the other side of it." Susan just shrugged as she seated herself on his bed without asking him permission. Yeah she was six months pregnant with six kids, but would it have killed her to at least ask him? All the same Johnny sat up as well to give her a little more room and so the two could look each other in the eye. "Well who is to say that you're more mature now then you were then?"

Just like he expected all punching his sister in the arm managed to achieve was making her flesh ripple slightly. "Come on, give me a little credit. Now why exactly did you not get the part where I told you I wanted to be left alone?"

Susan glowered right back at him, damn it that still sent way too many shivers up his spine. "How about, because I don't believe you when you say it? You see little brother I know a couple things about how it feels to be cut of from someone you care about, and in reality the last thing anyone in that situation wants to be is alone. So do you want to talk to me, or do you want to make me squeeze it out of you."

As usual, going up against his sister left Johnny with a lovely set of loose, loose, options. "Fine then, I'll talk, but if you try to hug me in any way shape or from then I'm going to crush you into the smallest ball I can manage and toss you out my window, got it?"

Susan held up her hands palms out, as if that meant anything when you were dealing with someone who could stretch their body any way they wanted. "That works for me, we don't have to get touchy feely about it. But like I said, one way or another we're going to talk." "Talk about what?"

Susan's arms began to elongate slightly, but Johnny kept his best glare looked firmly on her eyes and they quickly retracted to their orrigional length. "First off you're going to explain to me why exactly you're acting all down in the dumps over the fact that you've lost a pair of girls one of whom who you knew for about a month, and one who you knew for about a day. Because I knew Reed for over a year before I 'lost' him and I managed to take it a lot better then you. I know you Johnny, you're not that immature, there's something deeper going on with you, and I'm not leaving till you tell me what it is."

Johnny hung his head and tried not to actively growl with resentment. "Okay, fine. As you've probably noticed, you and Reed have each other, Ben has Alica, and I'm just sort of hanging out here on own and I'm getting just a little bit fed up with it. And I really thought that either one of them could have been the one..."

Susan lengthen her neck slightly adding more weight to her glare. "First of all the entire falling in love with a woman who had amnesia, as cliche as it sounds happened, and so you could make the argument that you never met the 'real' Medusa until she turned you down for Blackbolt. To your credit you obviously managed to take that fairly well and only needed to get in one drop down drag out fight with her true love before you patched things up and admitted you just wanted her to be happy."

Johnny drummed his fingers on the bed. "You know sis you're really just doing a bang up job when it comes to making me feel better about everything that I've been through recently." Of course unsurpringly Susan did nothing to lighten her tone. "And as for Crystal, you honestly think you can pick out the person you're meant to be with after only being with them for about a full day, and spending most of that day fighting for your life?"

Johnny forced himself to focus his eyes on his sisters midsection no matter how much he'd rather be looking at her eyes. "Uhuh, and when did you realize that Reed was the right guy for you?"

But his sister was far from put in her place by that question. "Johnny the first time I met Reed I hadn't even started mens..." Johnny cut her off with an half pleading half revolted tone in his voice. "Sis could you please use a different metaphor?" Susan just huffed slightly and then went on making her point. "Fine, the first time I met Reed, I couldn't even have called myself a teenager, if I'd known he was the one way back then it would have some very weird implications.

Even when we were more appropriate ages to fall in love with each other, I didn't know right at the start that he was the one. I knew that he was a nice guy who seemed to be just a little to into his testubes but I wanted to get to know better so I could see what was beneath that absent minded professor routine. But it wasn't until we'd gone on about a dozen dates, with Ben acting as the middle man between us on most of them that I was sure Reed was the one for me, and it wasn't until I was sure of it that we..." Once again Johnny coughed extremely loudly. "Let's not finish that sentence either."

Susan just shrugged. "Okay fine. Lets hear you explain to me why you thought Crystal was the one for you. Because if your in here just over the fact that you lost a girl with a pretty face, then you'll leave me with no choice but to slap some sense into you."

Johnny looked up at the ceiling. "It's more then that, it's a number of things. Listen as you no doubt know, I spent of a lot of my time growing up reading comic books and I saw a couple of things over and over again. Guy has superpowers, guy has girlfriend, guy has to constantly rescue said girlfriend since weather or not she knows he's a superhero, and quite frankly I could totally do without that in my life.

So then I ran into Medusa and I thought to myself 'hot damn' because not only was she a real looker, but if the two of us got together I wouldn't have to worry about getting Reed to stick a little electronic tag in one of her ears so that I would know where the bad guys were holding her every time she got kidnapped. And so basically the same thing happened with Crystal except more so, because things seemed to line up a little more naturally.

We've both got older sister's who are in loving relationships that recently got interrupted for reasons that are way too complicated for your average guy to believe. I didn't ask her if something bad happened to her parents, cause that could have been really bad taste but if they'd been alive she probably would have mentioned it at some point. So it seemed like if we'd been together for a while longer... and now I'm back here wondering if I'll ever see her again."

Susan retracted whatever subtle stretches she'd preformed and her scowl turned into a smile. "Johnny set your ears on record, because you shouldn't count on me saying this very frequently. I'm actually pretty proud of hearing you say that, because that's a pretty decent reason all things consider. Though personally I always thought Medusa might have been a bit too mature for you."

Johnny leaned forward sensing that oh so rare event, a conversation he'd been having with his sister had just shifted in his favor. "So for the record, Reed is how many years older then you?" Susan used an elongated arm to push him away from her. "There's a difference between age and maturity.

You've got no one to blame but yourself if all the time I spent having to play mother to you made me a mature enough woman to match up well with a man who's a couple years my senior. By the way, you do realize that Reed and I got together before we got superpowers right?"

Johnny shrugged helplessly. "Then what do you suggest? I hook up with some regular girl and hang out with her around nuclear reactors, meteor crash sites, and Reed's lab until something goes wrong and she develops superpowers? Because the odds of that aren't really all that great, and if she starts to get wise to the entire thing then it'll probably turn into something of a deal breaker.

So I've decided that the smarter move is just trying to hook up with a girl who already has superpowers. Besides, I know I don't say this very often, or ever before, but as crazy as it sounds: you being my uptight sister, and Reed being Mr. Science, and what not, you two together are actually sort of cool."

Now it was Susan's turn to suddenly have a look of complete surprise on her face "What?" Johnny managed a fairly convincing smile. "Hey I'm probably as surprised to say it as you are to here it, but if you look at it from an impartial point of view it's a sorta hard premise to disagree with.

I mean come on, when it's bring your parents to school day so that they can talk about their jobs, do you honestly think that anybody is going to be able come across as cooler then a superhero. Okay I'll admit that if Reed goes then it's quite possible since he could make just about anything sound as boring as watching grass grow. But as long as you go I know all the other parents will insist that your the last one to talk so that you don't show them up even worse by comparison.

So I figure that if I ever want to have a serious relationship, I want it to be like that, me with a girl who can look after herself even when supervillians are involved, and Crystal could have been that girl." Susan elongated her right arm resting it on her younger brother's shoulders.

"She still can. If you've noticed anything over the last year its that my husband is without meaning to cast doubt on his sanity, crazy smart. He's saved us plenty of times with that intelligence, and I' pretty sure he'll be able to save the Inhumans with it as well. So I'll do my part and try not to take up too much of his precious time, you just stay optimistic and I'd suggest against you hanging around with any other superheroines while we're waiting for him to succeed, that way you won't have to worry about choosing between some new girl and Crystal when the time comes." Johnny nodded in agreement, his life was already complicated enough as it was.


	14. Chapter 14

AN: At this point in the story, I acquired an editor who will remain nameless, so if you've managed to work your way this far into the story, congratulations, this chapter is the light at the end of the tunnel as far as the gramatic and syntatical errors (at which point there should be about 90-100 fewer) are concerned.

Also I've started another story called Original Twist that you can easily find by going to http: /www. fanfiction. net/s/ 4445237/1 /OriginalTwist (remove all the spaces I added to keep this site from mangling it) it is a prequel to Swelling WIth Love which starts on the day that this version of the Fantastic Four got their powers and will eventaully end right before the start of SWL. It's rated T since for much of the story Reed is only a psychic brain. Suffice to say, if you're enjoying this stories only because of the sex scenes then it's probably not for you, but if you like the strechy superheroics and this particular version of the FF, there will be plenty more of that!

Swelling with love Chapter 14, Arrivals: In which Reed Richards wastes time and a robot.

"Reed, can you feel what I'm feeling?" Reed slowly, but firmly pushed Susan's hand aside. "Not now dear. Much as it pains me to say it, the fates of an entire race of people counts for more than my pleasure, your pleasure, or even our combined pleasure."

However Susan's hand returned to his cheek, and her elongated neck was now also resting on the back of his chair. "Reed, I was not trying to get you hot under the collar, I was being serious. Reed, put your hand in the same general area I am." Reed pushed Susan's arm away again and went back to his typing. "There is nothing I could possibly feel on m cheek which could be as important as freeing the Inhumans."

A huff travelled up the length of Susan's body from her chest which was halfway across the room and wrapped around her hotrock to her lips. "Wrong. I know I swore to love, honor and obey, in sickness and in health, but someone like you should know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Well here is my ounce of prevention..."

Susan's hand did not go to Reed's cheek this time, at least not directly. She wrapped her right arm around Reed's and then she pulled on her arm like a fisherman tugging on their line to yank their catch from the water, forcing Reed's hand to rub up against his cheek.

"Feel that Reed? You've said my cheek feels sort of like latex, but at the moment yours feels sort of like sandpaper. Would I be correct if I trusted that a man of your intelligence can guess why?" Reed was able to figure out why in about five seconds. "It's beard stubble, so?"

Susan stretched out her neck even further so that now she was looking Reed right in the eyes. "That's right. Now, I understand that you've got an important task that you need to take care of, lots of people are depending on you, but I am not going to wind up a widow because I stood back and let you work yourself to death.

"So for the last few nights I've been okay with laying alone in bed knowing that my husband is working to make the world a better place and that he's on a deadline. But I also set myself a couple of limits about how far I'd let you push yourself.

"Guess what, the day that I could feel you growing a beard was one of them. So why don't you save your work, turn off your machines, and then you and I are going to get it on so until I am finally satisfied that for the first time in a week you don't have a thought left in your head.

"At which point we'll both get to work sleeping it off, I'll probably wake up first, and with any luck have breakfast ready about the time you manage to recover. You then eat said breakfast, shave, and then you can get back to work. Nothing personal Reed, but only when supervillians are on the loose will I let you neglect your own bodily needs.

"While the Inhumans are in quite a pickle their situation is not the equivalent of the entire world being in danger. Now then, like I said, save your work and turn off the machine before I have to do it myself." Very slowly Reed did just that and Susan wrapped her other arm around him as well, pulling Reed from his chair.

She began to uncoil herself from her hotrock, and set Reed down on the floor next to her. "So what exactly do you have to say for yourself?" "ZZZZZzzzzz..." A pair of heavily lidded blue eyes rolled back and it was only because of Susan' quickly stretching herself out to catch him that Reed didn't slam headfirst onto his lab's floor.

Susan quickly transformed into a makeshift sleeping bag cushioning Reed's body, using an outstretched hand to ruffle Reed's black hair. "Yeah, that's exactly how I thought you'd react, my poor little genius..." Susan closed her eyes, and soon she was every bit unconscious as her husband.

--

Susan sighed as she woke up and tried to roll over, she managed to half succeed at that particular task, the upper half of her body shifted its position, but the lower half of it remained firmly in place anchored by her belly. As she looked around, she noticed that once again she was the only one in bed.

A great sigh left her throat, as she blinked her eyes about half a dozen times. It profoundly sucked to be a woman who was only having sex six times a week, and the only reason that number wasn't three, was because she made sure to always end her nights of lovemaking with wrapping a leg firmly around Reed's, so that there was no way he could leave her side in the morning without waking her up. But that still meant there were four days a week when she woke up like this.

"Stupid Inhumans who have to be suffocating inside their stupid Great Refuge!" She didn't really mean it of course, but it was still irritating to have her husband occupied by a project that he couldn't finish quickly and she couldn't convincingly argue against the importance of.

Susan slipped out of bed, and took care of her morning routine. As she waddled her way out of the bathroom she used a pair of elongated arms to caress her extremely distended midsection. It'd finally happened, Susan had officially developed "beachball belly": she no longer looked so much like she was pregnant as somehow had swallowed a beachball full of water.

Her legs were still managing to prove strong enough to support and keep her upright, but the way it played havoc with her balance could make walking a bit difficult. Luckily, Ultra Woman had discovered plenty of fine alternatives to walking even before she got pregnant. Since she couldn't stop thinking about how her belly looked like a beachball she curled her entire body into a sphere about the size of one and started bouncing through the halls of the Baxter Building.

In the process Susan couldn't help but notice that every time she bounced, it no longer sounded like a rubber ball that was hitting the floor but a water balloon. If she'd had shoulders at the time, Susan would have shrugged, what mattered was that she was making good time for a normal woman let alone one pregnant with six children.

Susan's mind momentarily returned itself to that mental calendar she'd kept in her head ever since she found out she was pregnant. She was seven months along now, into the third and final trimester. Only another sixty days, eight weeks, two months, or if you wanted to measure time on the superhero scale, only two more supervillians bent on world domination, or some other equally devious end to deal with.

--

Susan was in luck, Ben and Johnny were already in Reed's lab as well, which probably meant he had something important (if not of such circle importance that he felt like disturbing his pregnant wife's sleep schedule) to share with them. "So you're sure that this plan will finally free the Inhumans?" Reed nodded firmly as he tapped a small pencil he was holding against one of the armrests of his chair.. "Yes, I finally realized that when faced with a obstacle which is the next best thing to impenetrable, it makes more sense to work on a way around it than to try and smash a way through it." "How exactly are we supposed to go around the negative barrier? It's over, under, and completely around Attilan!"

Apparently, spending a month apart from Crystal hadn't done much for Johnny's already short temper. "You're essentially correct, it even apparently prevents Lockjaw from being able to open portals outside of it. However, I doubt Maximus considered all the possible ways of getting from one place to another. The simple quantum mechanics principle of 'whatever is not forbidden is compulsory' argues against the idea that this is the only true 'world' not in the sense of Earth, but in the sense of various realities.

"Now doubtlessly most of these realities lay parrel to our own, never intersecting, and everyone involved is probably better off for it. However, if there are paralell universes, there must also be perpendicular ones that do intersect with ours at certain points, or at least possibly could. I've designed a device that should be capable of opening portals between our world and a perpendicular one. We plant one such device outside of Attilan, activate it, then we carry another one through the portal it makes with us, move all of ten or so feet through the perpendicular world, and set up the other device we brought with us.

At which point getting into and out of the Great Refuge nothing more then a short hop and skip through an alternate reality, and I'm proud to say that it should only take me about a week or so to take a pair of these devices from the blackboard to where they're needed." Just as Reed finished explaining suddenly a bright yellow circle of energy came into being inside his labs the intensity of which made all of them look away for a moment. When that brightness had passed they found Crystal and Lockjaw where standing right in the middle of Reed's lab.

"Johnny, we're back!" Johnny just sort of stared at her, then back at Reed, then back at the orange-haired inhuman. "Time travel right? Time travel explains this, and I really need to get you a one heck of a present for your next birthday." Crystal apparently realized that her four hosts hadn't been expecting her, and her wide grin subsequently turned into a demure smile.

"Sorry, I'll explain. We were running out of oxygen inside the Great Refuge so Blackbolt decided to do something drastic. He orders us to all head down to the shelters beneath the city, and then he basically screamed his lungs out. By the time it was over, Attilan was more or less reduced to rubble, but the Negative Barrier was gone also!"

Reed's pencil actually snapped, there was something very usual in his demeanor and voice. If he'd ever intended to turn into a genuine mad scientist he'd probably speak in a tone of voice a lot like his current one, except that for the moment at least Reed seemed more simply upset at the way the world works then angry at "the fools" who he would doubtlessly both show and make pay at some point down the line.

"Ahh, I see. Well then, I suppose I just spent the better part of the last month of my life up late working in my lab to try and figure out a solution for a problem that resolved itself just as I was on the cusp of a foolproof plan instead being with my pregnant wife. Susan, I think I'm done spending time in the lab for a while, why don't the two of us do the thing you've always been thinking of doing?"

Susan Richards blushed deeply. "Reed, you promised me you wouldn't go poking around in my head! Besides, where exactly do you suggest we get five gallons of chocolate pudding, a step ladder, and a taffy pulling machine at this time of day?" Everyone just sort of looked at Susan and then Reed coughed in a rather forlorn attempt to bring the attention of those in the room back around to him.. "Actually I was talking about the thing you told me you've always been thinking of doing, going on vacation."

Susan let out her own startled cough and shook her head a couple of times until her face was at least more pink then red. "Oh that, right. Sorry don't know where my head went there for a moment, must have been a pregnancy thing. I mean seriously what could possibly be planning to do with..." "Sis, if you love me, or at least care for the mental health of your younger brother, please don't list those three items again, or ever mention them again separately for at least a month."

"So where do you want to go?" Susan looked around as if wanting to make sure that Reed was in fact talking to her. "Well I always sort of considered that you'd be the one who came up with the idea of where to go." Reed shrugged defensively. "Well it was your idea so I thought you had a destination in mind." Ben looked around the room and then let loose with a very deep sigh.

"Okay that's it, it looks like I'm gonna have to play Mother Grimm for once so everybody listen up. You two lovebirds..." He directed her hands towards Johnny and Crystal for emphasis. "Get out of the lab, and take your pooch with you before Reed has to invent the world's biggest pooper scooper."

Johnny, and Crystal both nodded and Lockjaw followed them as they departed. "You two lovebirds..." He pointed his hands at Susan and reed now. "Stay right where you are, and if you haven't figured out where you're going then by the time I get back with some supplies then we'll figure out my way."

--

"So Johnny, what do you think of my outfit? I was thinking of you when I had it made." Johnny took a long moment to examine said outfit before responding, not to mention fight down a couple of knee jerk reactions. As opposed to the old white toga she'd been wearing last time she was now wearing an outfit that was more or less cut along the same lines as a Fantastic Four uniform.

Except instead of being varying shades of blue the outfit itself was a bright yellow while the gloves, boots, and belt were black. It not only looked much more practically then her old style of dress, but Johnny couldn't help but notice how much more form-fitting it was. "I really like..." Through a monumental effort Johnny managed to finish that sentence without making reference to any part of her anatomy. "Your outfit. Yeah, I really like your outfit, it looks great on you." Of course considering he'd already seen it, it would have been tacky to say that what amounted to a bedsheet also would have looked good on Crystal.

--

"There we go now, everything perfectly arranged, so just follow my instructions and we'll know where we're going." Ben's plan rubbed Reed in the worst way possible. "Are you sure about this Ben? It's not very scientific, and what if I hit Siberia, or miss the map entirely?" Once again Dragonfly's wings flapped in irritation. "If you pull your arm back and throw there's no way that you're going to miss the map. As for sending us to a winter wonderland, there's a reason I brought five darts with me, Reed.

If you can't hit some place I like with the first four then, I'm gonna let Susy stretch her arm over and pin the fifth one to the map." Susan was currently sitting close by Reed with her right arm wrapped around his eyes leaving him blindfolded. "Not to be overly curious or anything, but why does Reed have to hit some place that you like? I though this was going to be our vacation." Ben was silent for a few moments as he adjusted Reed's right hand so that it was properly pointed towards the map of the world he had hanging nearby.

"Well I wasn't going to mention it while everyone was tearing their hair out about rescuing Johnny 5's new girlfriend, his old one, and everyone else trapped inside that giant bubble, but Alica's going to an out-of-state art exhibition soon. Which means that my choices now apparently come down to finding where I put that tuxedo I wore to your wedding with the holes for my wings to come out of, and standing around trying not to say anything that embarrasses her, spending time in here with those two, or being out there with you two.

With you two at least I can count on to be discreet about it, so I figure wherever you're headed I'll play chauffeur. Now then, why don't you throw the dart and set our course?" Reed threw the dart, it whistled through the air, and the first response he got was Ben patting him on the back followed quickly by Susan kissing him on the cheek. "I assume I at least landed on the board?"

--

Susan sat calmly on their bed as she listened to Reed describe the results of his research into where exactly his dart had landed. "Tevo island is a small circle of land about a mile across. It was formed by volcanic activity though the volcano in the center of the island is now dormant, and it's in international waters and not owned by anyone since its natural resources basically consist of the coconut trees. The three of us would be the only intelligent beings for miles around."

Susan stretched out her neck and kissed Reed's other cheek. "Sounds like a great place to spend a week or so. Nice, calm, relaxing. We could forget to pack a hammock and so I have to tie my legs around one tree, my arms around another and then you fall asleep with your head on my belly listening to he sounds of our unborn children..." Reed walked over and for a moment pressed his right ear to her belly for a moment.

"That does sound magical. And don't worry a thing about packing I'll take care of everything." Susan shrugged, and then pressed her own right ear to her belly. "Whatever you say Reed, in that case I'll jus sit here and keep coaching our kids on just how important the process of cellular division is if they want to grow up big and strong." Reed gave Susan a quick peck on her left cheek. "That's my Ultra Woman."

--

"Say Reed, since the three of you are going to be out of town, and out of state, heck plain old out of the country, do you think that you could leave me with the keys to the Fantasticar? You know in case something bad happens or if Crystal and I just want to check out the horizon together."

Reed reached into a pocket of his white lab coat and passed the small blinking device to Johnny who held out his hands palms flat as if he was receiving a blessing from the deities themselves. "Just make sure to keep the shield system engaged so that you'll bring it back in one piece." Johnny nodded dumbly his eyes hopelessly fixated on the contents of his hands.

"Yeah, I will, and might I add that right now I take back every single mean thing I ever said and or thought about you? Seriously you are a prince, if not a king among men." Reed just smiled at his brother-in-law. "You've already got the keys, just make sure Crystal has fun also." Johnny stood up as straight as he possibly could and gave an overly formal salute. "You can count that, I won't let you or her down!"

--

Just about everything was taken care of and the five were saying their last goodbyes, some slightly less emotional than others. "Johnny, if you and Crystal do anything while we're gone, which I suggest you don't but I know you're not a kid any more and it is you two's choice in the end, make sure you've got protection." Crystal just smiled at Susan's warning. "I've been practicing a lot with my elemental powers, between those and the Mandroid's strength I think that we're pretty well taken care of as far as protection goes."

Whump! That was the sound of Susan's jaw unhinging like a snakes and falling to the floor. She returned it back to its normal location about five seconds later. "Reed, I think we're going to have to delay our vacation for an hour or so, Crystal and I are going to have a little chat on certain feminine matters before I leave her unsupervised in the Baxter Building with my brother."

--

In retrospect Susan realized it would be good practice for when she eventually had to give this particular speech to her children. But more importantly since Crystal wasn't related to her, she could approach the entire issue with an emotional detachment that Reed would have envied. She went over all the necessary concepts and then when she finally finished Crystal giggled.

Susan didn't exactly find this most encouraging of responses and lengthened her arms to point out her own belly as visual aid. "It's not exactly a laughing matter. The results of what can happen when you don't take precautions are sitting right in front of you. Granted you'd probably find yourself carrying a smaller number of children, but if you're gonna take risks with your body you should be aware of the possible results.."

Crystal covered her mouth to stifle another giggle and then sighed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you Ultra Woman..." "You and Medusa really are sisters apparently, if you want to date my brother then you're going to have to get used to calling me Susan." Crystal took a deep breath nodded and then started over. "Sorry, like I was about to say Susan, things work a little differently among us Inhumans.

We've got very long life spans and we don't conceive all that frequently. I think we're only fertile for about one day a month instead of for a full week like with you humans. Besides, it seems pretty silly to go through all that work just to try and avoid the greatest blessing that a woman can ever have in her life."

Crystal placed a black-gloved hand on Susan's belly and one of her kids promptly kicked slightly as they recognized that this was someone new 'shaking hands' with them. Susan glowered down at the orange-haired Inhuman. "I'll be the first to admit that I wouldn't trade even one of these children I'm carrying for the world, but pregnancy can be a tricky thing and you really don't wan to rush into it.

"I knew Reed for a good solid year before we got our powers and then another six months after that before we got pregnant, and even then it still felt like it might have happened a bit too soon You haven't even known my brother for a week yet and you come from completely different worlds, so I suggest you take it slow and get to know each other before you do anything rash. If you want a little proof why, consider just what a vice Medusa would have been caught in if she'd gotten pregnant with one or more of Johnny's children before she got her memory back..."

Sure enough that made Crystal's face pale noticeably and she nodded slowly. "Oh." Susan nodded as well and returned her arms to their original length. "Thatta girl. Romeo and Juliet fell in love at first sight and they didn't exactly come to a happy end. Slow and steady wins the race just like they say." Crystal's green eyes were wide in incomprehension. "Who were Romeo and Juliet?"

Susan slapped her elastic face with an equally elastic hand. "Sorry, its going to take some getting used to remembering that you've basically missed several centuries of human culture. Romeo and Juliet are characters in a famous story who come from two different feuding families, meet fall in love at first sight, and end up killing themselves." Crystal oddly enough smiled as she heard those words.

"Well with any luck by the time you get back from your vacation, Johnny will have shown me most of the wonders of his and your world, and I won't be so prone to missing any points you try to make." Susan slowly rose to her feet, her belly going up and down like a miniature wave in the process.

"We can only hope, though I'd trust my husband much more then I trust my brother to take care of that particular problem. Either way, welcome to New York City, if the last great human achievement you're familiar with is fire, then good luck keeping your eyes from popping out of their sockets, you're going to need it."

--

"So are my two lovebirds properly nested?" Reed checked his straps, and nodded. "I'm good, Susan?" Susan checked her strap including the extra one across her belly before nodding also. "All set. By the way Reed I heard I'm pretty sure I'm remember hearing something that was significantly less than an old wives tail about women in their third trimesters shouldn't fly.

So before we start counting down from 'T-minus 10' that kind of thing is covered by my powers isn't it?" "Given that it's doubtlessly caused by the stress take off and landing puts on the human body, doubtlessly covered by your powers." "All right then Ben, both your passengers are ready." Ben checked the controls to the new Pogo Plane and then nodded. "All right folks. Fantastic Four flights departing from New York to Tevo Island is about to disembark. I'd tell you how long this flight is expected to be, but since this is my first flight in this particular vehicle I've got no idea how fast this sucker is going to move once I really let her out.

"Also, your pilot can't 100 guarantee that we won't have run into turbulence of a supervillian nature. I also hate to tell you that we're all out of peanuts, and there's no in-flight movie. Before I put this particular girl through her paces a quick safety lecture. The one exit is located directly above you, and should we have to bail out keep calm and count on your pilot to look after you.

In the case of a water landing however, I'm looking at you to be the raft Susy. Please keep your arms, legs, and other appendages elastic or otherwise inside your seats from lift off until the plane has come to a complete stop. Thank you for your patience, and hopefully we'll have a lovely flight. Now then, we are at T-minus ten..."

--

"I do believe that our destination is coming into view even as we speak, and oh boy..." Reed leaned forward as best he could. "What is it Ben?" The sound of Ben tapping his hands on the instrument panel could be heard within the confines, of the plane. "Well professor, some of your instruments just started going crazy as all get out, and I sure as hell can't see what's causing it."

A moment later all the of the Pogo Plane's occupants began to bounce up and down in their seats. "Aww jeez, any more of this and I'll know how a popcorn kernel feels!" Reed of course had a much more technical description of the problem on hand. "These intense vibrations if they go on much longer they might shake the ship apart right out from underneath us! Ben, activate the ship's shielding system!" "Which is which button again? You've got close to three dozen of 'em up here and remembering how to steer this crate is tricky enough as is!"

"The big white one!" Ben pushed the necessary buttons and suddenly everything went calm inside the ship. "Unfortunately Ben because the shielding system completely covers the ship, even you can set it down on its tail, we'll need to make a crash landing." Susan began to scratch her chin with a finger that snaked her way up from her hand which was still more or less level with her belly. "Let me guess. Having a big blue bouncy landing pad would help with that?"

Reed blushed and nodded, causing Susan to let out a long sigh as their ship drew closer to Tevo island at a very dramatic rate. "Okay then, just so I know how good a job I need to do, are we gonna find ourselves playing Survivor the home edition if the Pogo Plane gets wrecked up the landing?" Reed managed to smile at this point. "We've got enough supplies to get by for a full week and there about five redundant communications systems built into the Pogo Plane, so long as we don't break the all then we've got nothing to worry about."

Susan began to rub her hands together nod slowly. "All right then, I'll give it everything I've got, though using my body to soften a plane's landing is more or less exactly the kind of thing I was trying to take a vacation away from. Well ce la vie. Let's do this thing." Susan slipped right on out of her straps curling herself into a convenient blue sphere about the size of a soccer ball that Reed was able to hold in his hands. "Okay then Ben, when I say 'now' I want you to hit the blue button in a crescent moon shape, that'll open up the top of the Pogo Plane. Then deactivate the shields until I throw Susan out in front of us, and she'll do all the work when it comes to the landing.

After that we'll have to find out just how bad the damage is, and see if we can locate what was causing these vibrations in the first place." Ben nodded and nosed the Pogo Plane downwards. It began to lose altitude at a somewhat alarming rate. "NOW!" Ben pressed the necessary button and the Pogo plane top popped up. He then pressed the necessary white button to deactivate the shields. Reed hurled Susan in front of the ship before the air currents got too difficult to fight against.

For her part Susan quickly spread herself outwards and wrapped herself fully around the Pogo Plane. Ben managed to reactivated the ship's shields just before it hit the sand and the vehicle bounced about three times before finally laying still. Susan slid away allowing light to once again fill the cockpit and to his credit Ben still had his sense of humor about him.

"We hope this experience hasn't turned you off to the concept of flying, it's still the statically safest form of travel, and all that." Reed began to undo his straps and as he looked up he saw something that made his fingers go slack. A giant robot that had to be at least fifteen feet tall was making its way across the sandy beach towards them.

Susan for her part was slowly resuming her normal appearance and glaring up at the giant metal man. "Something tells me you're not one of the tourist attractions...!" The huge thing just looked down at her, its face a blank mask. "I am intergalactic Kree Sentry 459, I cannot be deterred form my purpose, no outsiders are to be allowed upon his island."

Reed quickly finished undoing his straps and then turned to his teamate. "Ben, I need you to help me into my armor." "And after that should I shine your horse's hooves?" Reed just looked Ben straight in the eye since they were more or less the exact same height. "Ben, until I get into my armor the only one of us who has any chance of slowing that thing down at all is my pregnant wife. So perhaps you can understand why I need you to follow orders now more than ever?" The two exchanged another quick look and then Ben nodded. "You're right..."

--

The creature reached down with a huge hand and wrapped it around Susan and lifted her up into the air. "For countless years, my sole task has been to protect this base from invaders like you." Susan looked deep into its huge unblinking eyes. "My husband is going to have some serious explaining to do on the subject of how this place's only natural resources are the coconuts, he really is.

And I'd suggest you stop trying to put the squeeze on me, because that's just not how things work around here. My name is Ultra Woman, and in fact I'm about to put the squeeze on you!" Susan slipped right out of Sentry's grip without even trying. She curled into a ball momentarily before she hit the ground, and then bounced wrapping her body around the robot's legs and pulling tight. Just like they said, the bigger they are the harder they fall, and with a gigantic crash Sentry toppled forwards, though luckily it fell short of crushing the Pogo Plane in the process.

Not so luckily it'd apparently take more then one fall to disable this mechanical monstrosity. "This world has spawned many strange new creatures since it I last observed them, but it makes no difference." Susan kept herself coiled firmly around the robot's legs, however this didn't stop it from starting to slowly crawl towards the Pogo Plane on its hands and legs. "What's the matter? Am I suddenly too much for you so you've got to pick on my friends instead?"

Susan snaked her body out even further, encircling the things upper limbs as well. Then she promptly got to work trying to pull all four of its limbs towards its torso or at least keep it from moving any further towards her teamates. It worked well enough, Sentry evidently couldn't escape through raw strength alone, but she realized this only as she suddenly felt part of the robot's chest move backwards, and something that felt suspiciously like ray gun slide out from it, pressing against her body.

Susan quickly shifted herself about so that the ray gun wouldn't be firing directly towards her womb and held on bracing herself for whatever came next. Sure enough she felt the weapon begin to radiate heat for a moment and then there was a discharge of energy that blew her clean off of Sentry and left her rolling across the beach, a misshapen blob with overly long limbs extending from it at odd angles.

--

Reed saw Susan go flying or at least bouncing and rolling away from the Sentry, and knew that it would be getting back on its feet very soon. Luckily Ben had just finished helping him into his armor. "Your first big mistake was taking your optical sensors off of me."

At effectively point-blank range he fired a pair of full powered concussion blasts into the thing's head. "Your second and even bigger mistake was attempting to ruin a vacation I planned for my wife!" He curled his hands into fists and drove them into the Sentry's head through the dents his previous attack had made. Sentry tried to reach for him with one of its giant arms, and then it was a race between the two.

Reed couldn't see what his hands were doing, and even if he could he doubted he'd be able to recognize any of the important equipment he was trying to locate. So remembering how they'd ended up on Tevo Island in the first place, he just chose at random, tearing apart anything inside the robot's head that he could get a grip on.

Just as he was starting to feel a very large hand pressing his armor's shields he ripped some other piece of circuitry free from its resting place and the arm went limp along the with the rest of Sentry's body. Reed pulled his hands out of the severally battered head, looked at the results of his actions and began to wipe his gauntleted hands against one another as he turned towards Ben who was waiting eagerly for something, anything else to happen.

"Well nurse, I think we're officially done operating on this patient. Time to scrub up and call it a day." Ben relaxed slightly and shook his head. "So it's okay to joke after the evil robot's been destroyed, I'll make a note of that. So should I tell your stretchy spouse that you're done working for the day or do you want to do it yourself?" Reed removed his mask and smiled. "Please, I'll be glad to do that myself. Susan are you all right?" Susan began to assume a more or less human appearance while she was laying down on her belly.

"I think I'm more or less okay though that thing knocked me for a loop. I'm pregnant, right?" Reed nodded and Susan breathed a heavy sigh of relief her belly getting a little bigger in the process. "Well in that case everything more or less makes sense, though I'll need about another minute or so to clear my head before I'm perfectly sure of how well I'm doing."

Before removing the rest of his armor, Reed took the ten seconds or so necessary to crush the ray gun that Sentry had used to blast Susan into scrap metal. "There. In our lives it never hurts to take precautions. With any luck now all we have to worry about is unloading the Pogo Plane, and picking which side of the island belongs to me and Susan and which side of it belongs to you."

Ben came up with another remarkably reasonable solution to that second problem. "Tell you what, you guys can have this side so long as you handle all the unpacking." He was in midflight a few moments later obviously going along with his plan regardless of what Reed thought of it. Which was just as well since Reed would have agreed anyway.

--

Susan looked off the direction of the Pogo Plane which had still been laying on its side when she and Reed had walked away from it. Luckily between to Susan's powers and Reed's ingenuity, they'd managed to extricate everything they needed from it. "We're still going to be able to fly that thing out of here eventually aren't we? Because I'd hate to think I took a lazer blast to the guts for nothing."

Reed fluffed out a large towel, and laid it on top of some dry sand. "Of course. Though all things considered, I'll probably be your help when the time comes to be the lever that Archimedes talked about." Susan sat down on top of the towel, then shifted about so that she was laying on her side facing Reed. "Which lever was that again, just so that there aren't any more surprises in my future?"

Reed laid down on the towel next to Susan, now that the danger had past Reed had gotten out of his armor, and both of them were out of their unstable molecule uniforms. Instead they still dressed in some unstable molecule swimming suits which seemed to be cut along exactly the same lines as their undergarments normally where except that instead of being sky blue both of the items that made up Susan's two piece were red with pink stripes, and while Reed was wearing swimtrunks that were a turquoise color with orange stripes.

"Archimedes proposed that if he had a long enough lever, and solid place to stand he could move the entire world. A boast which had more going for it in a time when conventional wisdom said the world was flat, but the principle of it is sound enough, the longer the lever you have to work with, the greater the effect it has.

"It's a principle that you can observe just about every single time you use your powers, since with your limbs serving as the levers and the rest of your body as the place to stand. That's why even if it doesn't exactly qualify as superstrength, you're still able to lift considerably greater burdens then you could have before you got your powers.

"Of course in my example I was planning to have you properly anchor your arms around the Pogo Plane, your legs around something else equally solid and then use the strength my armor gives me to pull the thing from its current horizontal position into a vertical one from which it can properly take off. But that's something we shouldn't have to worry about for a good 48 hours at least. Just like how to properly pull apart Sentry and store his component pieces in the Pogo Plane for transport back to the Baxter Building. For right now; it's just you, me, and the surf."

Susan blinked a couple of times in surprise. "Wait a minute, let me get this perfectly straight. You'd rather spend time here with me then dissecting a giant super-advanced robot that so much as told us it was built by aliens?" Reed shifted his position so that instead of looking up at the sky he was now looking straight into his wife's eyes. "Is that so hard to believe?"

Susan coiled an arm around her husband and then very slowly nodded. "Don't take this the wrong way, but seriously, it is. In fact right now the solution that makes the most sense for how those words could have come out of your mouth would be that at some point in the fairly recently past, the Skrulls sent down another strike team which located Super -Skrull, busted him free from whatever dairy he was being held him, undid the brain washing that the real Reed Richards performed on him, then kidnapped my husband and had him, by which I mean you, take his place.

"At which point, obviously your plan is to keep me content and happy before stealing my children away after I give birth to them so that the Skrull empire can get their hands on the offspring of the man who so soundly defeated them twice and maybe train them to be the military leaders and scientists who will help the conquer this world and whatever other galaxies they've got their eyes on.

"Come to think of it they'll also probably want me to so that I can spend the rest of my days breeding more of the same for them since I seem to be so very good at getting very pregnant without even intending to. After your commanders shoot me full of whatever space age fertility drugs you have, I'll probably find myself hitting menopause before forty.

"Feel free to correct my math, but if I'm pregnant with say twice this at the very least that's twelve eggs a pregnancy which are nine months long and one for recuperation, that's still a faster rate than I would lose my eggs through ordinary menstruation. Though by the time that issue raises its head, they'll probably have figured out a way to create artificial eggs to inject into my ovaries so that I never run out of them.

Of course if that's true, then there's jack-all I can do about it right now. So I guess I might as well bare in mind that old saying about how if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." Reed kissed Susan gently on her cheek. "I promise I'll be gentle."

Susan rotated her neck a good 180 degrees before spitting in the sand, after which she rotated it another 180 degrees bringing herself face to face with those blue (he'd forgone the color changing contacts) eyes again. "Oh come on, who wants to be treated gently? If I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life popping out kids like a gumball machine for evil aliens to use conquer the rest of my species and maybe a few others, the sex might as well be good, if you can stretch I'd expect you to do it."

Reed held up his hands defensively. "Sorry, no alien shapshifters, just your loving husband who doesn't have the tools on him to analyse that robot now and since it's apparently gone so long without breaking done on its own, something tells me it won't suffer to much wear and tear damage from being left out in the sun for a few days. Which is why I want to spend my time with you."

Susan unrotated her neck a full 360 degrees and smiled. "Oh, well now that you've come up with a logical explanation for why you'd rather spend time with me than be picking apart said robot I suppose you're story is just that much more believable, well played. So what's in the crate?"

The 'crate' was actually a silvery wheeled contraption that looked to me more or less just a bit larger then your average refrigerator (it was also a perfect cube) that Reed had wheeled over to their current location before removing his armor and storing it inside the thing. At Susan's question he calmly stood up, walked over removed something from it carefully holding it behind his back until he sat down next to her. "It's everything I thought we could possibly need. Might I offer the lady a drink? Got to keep hydrated after all."

Reed held out an actual coconut with a straw in it. Susan looked at the thing, and then gave it a slight shake. "So before I go putting unknown clear liquids into my body, what exactly is this thing filled with?" Reed placed his right hand on the coconut. "Just ice water." Susan took a long sip an smiled. "You're right, it is refreshing but just one little thing..."

She pulled the straw out of the coconut, looked carefully into relatively small hole that it had entered into the coconut through. "I hate to ruin the mood, but if I don't ask this, its going to bug me until we get back to the Baxter Building, how did you manage to get ice cubes inside this thing, because that hole is way to narrow for regulation sized ones.

I mean did you fill it with water freeze it, then heat it so that only most of the ice melted? Heck where did you even get these things, I wasn't aware that they sold coconut drinks anywhere outside of the movies." Reed shook his head a wide smile on is face. "Well as for the coconuts, well I actually simply bought some regular coconuts, drilled a necessary sized hole, lets its previous contents drain out, and then filed it with water.

As for the ice cubes, no that wasn't how I did it, after all if I accidentally put too much water in them, then when I froze them the coconut probably would have burst after the water expanded in the process of turning into ice.

Actually I've been working on a special machine designed to produce icecubes to my exact specifications, so it was no difficulty at all to make 'cubes' that were really more like cylinders and insert them into the drink, which is how this came about." Susan shook the coconut again and put the straw back in it.

"Seriously, precision ice cubes? Regale me with the tale of just what your great plan for those are, unless you made them just to fit inside my drink." Reed slowly ran a hand through his wife's blonde hairs. "As much as I would like to say I did, that wouldn't be true. The application is actually pretty obvious once you carefully consider matters of scale.

"Right now it may only be able to useful for making amusing party favors, but give me another month or so and before our children are born given enough raw material I'll be able to produce ice sculptures at an 'impressive' rate to say the least. It's at that step of the process that I admit I made the thing mainly for you enjoyment."

Susan blushed, but then tilted her head slightly and spoke in a very whimsical tone of voice. "Well I guess its too bad that'll be three months too late for you to have produced so many beautiful ice sculptures ready to use as decorations for our wedding that we'd have to be careful about properly disposing of them, unless we wanted to accidentally cause a minor flood."

Reed just smirked back at her. "Well there's are several other occasions that they would make appropriate place setters at and they even all come round once a year: your birthday, our anniversary, Christmas, Mother's Day, Labor Day..."

Susan cut Reed off before he could go any further. "Forgive me if I'm mistaken but isn't Labor Day a celebration labor as in unions rather than as in giving birth to children?" Reed gently moved his right hand from Susan's hair to her chin. "You know that, and I know that, but I fail to see why we should let that stop us from celebrating any way we wanted."

Susan licked her lips, before letting her tongue grow a little longer before gently licking Reed's lips as well. "You raise a very, very, good point." Reed pulled away from her and returned to her side a moment later after extracting a bottle from his giant container of vacation supplies.

"Well then, allow me to now raise another one. You're a lot more exposed to the elements at the moment than you have been for a long time, which is why I made sure to bring along one of life little niceties for such occasions, suntan lotion."

Susan put down the coconut, her face assuming a displeased expression at what she saw before her. "Do I have to?" Reed pointed a hand firmly upwards towards the sun. "The ozone layer isn't what it used to be sadly enough, though as CFC and HCFCs are replaced with chemicals that break down much more quickly or preferably don't cause two molecules of ozone to be transformed into three of oxygen at all, it should become less o f an issue, but that's not going to happen for quite a while.

"Besides, even disregarding the dangerous affects that UVB rays can have upon the human genestrucure, which basically amount to they've only been shown to cause cancer and never superpower, if you don't use suntan lotion you could still get end up with a nasty sunburn, and I doubt you hissing in pain every time I touched part of our body is how you want to spend our vacation."

Susan looked up at the sun and growled slightly as if she could make it plummet just by sheer intimidation alone. "You're serious about this? I mean come on I thought we'd already agreed that I could handle way higher temperatures than normal humans without worrying about first through third-degree burns, but this I have to worry about?"

Reed sat up so that instead of looking directly at Susan's face he was now doing it by gazing at her over her belly. "Sunburn isn't caused by heat, it's caused by UV radiation. UVB radiation in particular due to the fact that UVA radiation tends to be more or less effectively harmless and UVC rays are still more or less easily blocked by the ozone layer, leaving UVB in the unfortunate position of being just the right wavelength to slip through the ozone layer and harm human DNA.

"Which as I said, is the cause of sunburn, and sadly your powers don't protect you against it. So you'll have to settle for the mundane solution to this particular problem. Besides, it won't be that bad." Susan crossed her arms as she glared up at him.

"You know I hate to break it to you Reed, but one of the first things any child learns while growing up is to take those words with about five dozen cups of salt whenever you hear a doctor say them to you. Nothing personal of course." Reed shifted his gaze between the bottle of suntan lotion and his wife.

"What's the matter, is the same Ultra Woman who agreed to use her body to soften the landing of a ICBM and then faced down a giant robot afraid of a little suntan lotion?" Susan glowered up at him. "I'm not afraid. I just don't like the stuff, it always ruins perfectly good moments like now, I'm just laying here soaking up the rays feeling all nice and warm, and I know for a fact that stuff is gonna feel way more cold than the rest of my body.

I've felt that way all my life and it's not about to change now." Reed stood up and sat down behind Susan. "Listen, you just lay back and I'll take care of everything." Susan rotated her neck so that she could look at Reed. "What about you?" "I put some of this all-day suntan lotion on before we left the Baxter Building."

Realizing that there was no way that she'd win his argument her head retracted back to its normal positions. Reed squirted some of the lotion in his right hand, and brushed aside a handful of blond hairs to carefully apply the suntan to the back of Susan's ears and neck. "Do you have to do back there? I figured that my long luscious hair would be enough to get by on."

Reed just continued to rub more of the white lotion into the back of Susan's neck and around her ears. "Well I don't take chances with the health of my wife, but if you really want to get this over and done with as quickly as possible I suppose there is another approach available..."

--

Reed calmly lay on his back looking up at the sky. "Fifty eight Mississippi, fifty nine Mississippi, sixty Mississippi." It was far from the worlds most exact system off counting out a minute but it would do. He calmly picked up the suntan lotion bottle he'd half buried in the sand, gave it one last good shake and then with a quick twist, removed the top.

Susan's head followed by a much longer neck then she usually possessed flowed lithely out of the bottle waving back and forth slightly as they remained vertically upright. "Master, for momentarily freeing me from that accursed prison where I have resided for time beyond measure, I will grant you three wishes."

Apparently something about the process of effectively taking a bath in suntan lotion had put Susan in a playful mood, well Reed was more than willing to rise to the challenge. "I wish you free from your confinement permanently, pregnant with two of my strapping sons and four of my beautiful daughters, and madly in love with me..." The rest of Susans body slowly began to slide forth from the bottle, including her pregnant belly which promptly returned to its considerable size the moment it had room too.

"The first and second wish I can grant, but don't you know the four rules? No wishing for more wishes, no wishing anybody alive to be dead, no wishing for anyone dead to be alive, and no wishing for people to fall in love..."

Reed stroked his chin for a moment and gathered his thoughts before responding. "All right then, what would you wish for." Susan who had been starting to pull her legs free from the bottle stopped. "Well considering that you're already wishing me free from this particular prison I suppose I'd have to wish for someone to keep me company so that I'd never be alone..."

As the tips of her feet (her toenails like much of her body still had a somewhat white glossy coating of suntan lotion resting upon them but Reed didn't care) cleared the bottle she then picked it up and looked into it for a moment. "Definitely not big enough to serve as a duplex..."

Without further ado she hurled the bottle some distance down the beach. "I brought more than one bottle of suntan with me you realize..." Susan rolled her eyes most expressively. "Reed, simply put, expecting you to have brought one of anything when you had adequate time to prepare is a sucker's bet, but since you said the stuff was good for twenty-four hours, I don't plan on worrying about it for a while, and just for reference, this stuff is waterproof right?"

"Give it a few minutes to properly set and it should be, why do you ask?" Susan looked off towards he herizon and sighed. "Well I though it'd be fun to take my powers around for a spin in the water sometime. But we can worry about that later. Right now I just want to lay down, stretch out, and enjoy the sunshine. She reached over, picked up her coconut, and smiled. "To us!" Reed retrieved a coconut of his own from the grey crate and pressed it against Susan's. "Indeed, to us!"


	15. Chapter 15

AN: Wow, you guys really brought it with the hit count where the last chapter was concerned, and here I'd thoguht everyone had lost interest in this story. Of course I'd love to get some feedback, but you can't always get what you want. Here's the next chapter of SWL and Original Twist should be updating soon.

Swelling with love chapter 15, Departures: In which Reed Richards phones home, and Susan Richard takes a bath.

The first thing Reed Richards distinctly heard as he came awake was the sound of the ocean. As he slowly sat up he realized what the sound's true origin was, just like Susan had promised yesterday since Tevo islands was somewhat lacking in places to sleep they'd just picked out two nearby palm trees, Susan had stretch herself out between them and Reed had fallen asleep with his head resting on Susan's child swollen belly.

The sound of the "ocean' had actually been the sound of what had been a combination of the her last meal digesting and the movement of unborn children within her womb. "Have fun?" Susan's blue eyes opened slowly and she stretched, unfortunately in the process giving her body too much slack meaning most of her body and all of Reed's hit the ground a few moments after she'd woken up.

"Whoops. Well when we do this tomorrow I'll make sure to throw in a few extra knots so that I don't look like such a fool in front of you again." Reed leaned forward over Susan's belly to plant a quick kiss on her nose. "You don't have to worry about looking like a fool around me, and coincidentally we're the only ones around for a noticeable distance, in fact if you disregard Ben the ones around for miles."

Susan slowly began to straighten out her hair while she returned her arms and legs to their normal lengths so that she looked more like a human being and less like a hammock. "You're right, I really shouldn't let an events that's going to be an inevitable fixture of this relationship get under my skin. Your IQ is around twice mine after all.

But hey, if I've got to be a blonde ditz, at least I'm a smoking hot blonde ditz." Reed tantalizingly ran a hand across Susan's bare belly. "You know I think of you as more than that..." Susan playfully wrapped her arms around Reed's body. He began to ever so tenderly run his tongue across her lips as he adjusted his posture now resting his elbows upon her belly.

"Besides looking foolish is something that happens to everyone sooner or later, I certainly felt foolish when you pointed out how if I'd been trying to look just like I'd used to then I should have considered dyeing my hair. So, breakfast?" Susan nodded eagerly her arms returning to their normal length.

"That sounds wonderful. You take care of that and I'll go find a decently-sized tree and waddle behind it, I might not have to worry about looking foolish in front of you, but there are some things that I'd really rather do in private." Reed gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and nodded. "Whatever you want, that's why we're on vacation after all."

--

Johnny knew that he now faced a task the likes of which he had never been confronted with before. Crystal might have picked up English with surprising quickness, but there was a lot of other stuff she didn't know. "The good news Crystal is that all things considered, most people only really care about what's happened during the last three hundred years of human history.

Now my brother-in-law would probably insist you read a lot of textbooks, learn a lot of facts, but I have a much quicker approach planned. Well me, Reed Martin, Austin Tichenor, and Matthew Croke. It's a little show presented by the Reduced Shakespear Company called The Complete History of America, Abridged and I happened to have it on DVD."

Crystal's eyes widened slightly as she joined Johnny on the couch in front of a TV who's exact measurements Johnny would estimate as, large. "How can they call it complete and abridged in the same title?" Johnny smiled at her question glad to see he was working with an attentive pupil. "That is what is known as an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp, Microsoft Works, military intelligence, or whenever Reed says he's going to explain things simply.

It's a self-contradicting term; what matters is that these guys will hit all the high points of American history. After that Crys we can move onto more in-depth focus on certain periods stuff, for example I think we can cover just about everything you'll need to know about the Cold War by watching Dr. Strangelove, everything you need to or everything you need to know about Manifest Destiny by watching Go West with the Marx Brothers." "Are they identical or fraternal?"

Johnny was momentarily taken by surprise. "What now?" Crystal's eyebrow twitched as if it should have been obvious. "The Marx Brothers, are they identical or fraternal?" Johnny shook his head very, very slowly. "All five of them are fraternal, though only four of them ever got involved in the movies and only three of them are in Go West." "So why not refer to themselves as the Marx Triplets?"

Johnny wondered if having Crystal repeat the phrase "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" and hen bursting into a big musical number would suddenly make things better. "Because just the 'Marx Brothers' is what they decided to call themselves, they're a Vaudeville act." "So where is Vaudeville in relation to New York?"

Johnny knew Crys was only honestly curious, but all the same he felt they were just about one minute away from her asking who was one first, and he wasn't used to playing the straight man, that was usually his sister or better yet Reed's job. "Vaudeville isn't a place, it's a style, which will make sense once you've seen them in action.

Clearly we're gonna really put our noses to the grindstone if we want to be ready in time for European studies later tonight on Broadway, trust me Spamalot will teach you everything you need to know about Europe during the middle ages and I got us great tickets! Well everything you'll need to know except for the stuff that's in Robin Hood Men In Tights.

Which brings to mind how we'll have to watch Blazing Saddles after Go West. And of course then we should be able to compact what it means to go to college into about an hour and thirty minutes by watching Animal House. You know something tells me we're going to need another bowl of popcorn, think you can handle it?"

Johnny tossed the full packet to Crystal who caught it, emptied it into a nearby bowl and then held in both hands which quickly began to glow red. About thirty seconds later every single cornel was popped and not a single one burnt. "Just for reference, it's not the ability to pop those things that really impresses me Crys, its how you do them while keeping all the kernels in the bowl."

Crystal smiled broadly at Johnny's compliment. "Controlling where they move is all about proper wind manipulation, nothing else to it really." Johnny just nodded along and shrugged, he rarely cared exactly how someone's powers worked so long as they did. "Ahh well getting back on topic, don't be afraid to ask me if you need clarification on anything, and if you see me laughing and you're not it's probably a good sign that you're missing something."

--

The times that Reed most resented being telepathic tended to overlap almost perfectly with the times when it was most useful. /Reed we got problems, that giant robot is back!\ Up until he had received that mental message the biggest problem that Reed had been planning to contemplate that day was how to spend the proper thirty minutes between eating breakfast and finally getting around to swimming.

He'd already found an answer to that question to, which was why his lips had been wrapped around Susan's, while her body had been seductively wrapping its way around his. Susan felt the traditional semi-paralysis that accompanied the use of his powers and a pronounced frown appeared on her face. "Let me guess, the aliens didn't leave just one giant robot behind?" Reed shook his head, he suddenly found himself laying on the sand as Susan's body slipped out from beneath his own.

"No, but apparently we didn't do a good enough job breaking the first one we came across." A very long drawn out sigh left Susan's lips. "Okay, well that is sort of a good thing I guess, it means there hopefully aren't even more of them waiting for us after we finish turning this one to scrap, not to mention we've already beaten it once. So what is our game plan?"

Reed pointed in the necessary direction. "Ben's is that way, you go help him, while I get into my armor and contact Johnny and Crystal. Also you'll be glad to hear that once we're finished with it I think I'll forgo studying this thing all together and simply toss its components into the volcano that formed this island in the first place. It might be inactive, but the magma inside should still be plenty hot enough."

Susan gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "It's kind of you to say that, but we both know you don't mean it. Just one thing before I go, isn't it way too early to count on Johnny being up, and isn't he way too far away for your telekinesis to work?" Reed pointed with his other hands towards the large metal case that held his armor not to mention vacation supplies.

"On the first point, the difference in time zones works in our favor, on the second you're right, but because I know my own limitations I also made sure to bring some less ostentatious means of communication along with us. Now go check on Ben, up against a foe like Sentry he'll deffiently need your help."

Susan nodded and slowly stood up, twisting her neck around so that she could look at him even as she slowly began to walk away. "There's that, and then there's the fact that you probably just wanna watch my extra bouncy backside." Susan gave her ass cheeks a slap from a temporarily enlarged arm before throwing in a saucy wink."

Reed found it hard to do anything but nod at that point. Susan having wasted all the time she planned to waste promptly broke into the best approximation of a run she could manage, elongated her legs so as to cover several meters with each step she took.. For his part Reed just headed over to the case wondering what parts of his armor he could get on with just one free hand, he'd need the other to dial the appropriate number to call the Baxter Building after all.

--

Even if Susan hadn't know which way to head it wouldn't have taken her long to figure it out for herself, there just weren't that many (or so she was still able to hope) giant robots on the island. Unfortunately as she caught sight of it, Sentry had somehow managed to grab Ben out of the air and promptly slammed the hand holding him beneath the waves.

Even worse, Susan had been elongating her eyes when she'd caught sight of that particular event, and it took her about half minute to cross the fourth of a mile between her and the her teamate. Rather then focus on Ben's plight she managed to find some perverse solace in the fact that doubtlessly if she ever felt like trying out of the Olympics she'd have no trouble snagging a gold metal in some track event on her way to going down in the records books as the faster pregnant woman in history, able to waddle an entire mile in just over one hundred and twenty seconds!

"If you knew what's good for you then you'd let go of him now." Sentry turned itself around slightly facing her as she approached. "I must follow my orders, all intruders are to be eliminated." Susan took a few moments that she hoped like hell she had to spare to catch a really good breath.

"Then funnily enough I don't have a choice about eliminating you either!" Susan turned her lower body into a spring and launched herself at the grey robot, making sure to first cover its eyes with her body before she set about wrapping it up about as thoroughly as a Christmas present. After about ten seconds of doing that she heaved herself upwards, causing Sentry to fall flat on its back into the water, the shock causing its right hand to unclench letting go of Ben.

It was only as she was quickly untangling herself that Susan realized that she'd just bet Ben's (not to mention her own and of course those of her children) life on the hope that even with a crumpled head and a big dent in its chest Sentry was still water tight. Because if the fall she'd just put it through fried its circuits, causing it to pour a couple thousand volts into the water then it'd be an experience none of them enjoyed..

But even though that particular fate was avoided, that small bit of good luck was balanced out by the fact that Susan spent the next ten seconds fruitlessly lengthening her arms and swinging them around trying to find Ben by nothing more than blind luck, since with a face full of stinging salt water her vision was next to nil. As her head went above water and she tried to take in another deep breath and blink her eyes clear, it happened.

The closest she could come to describing it was the first time she stretched out her arms to wrap themselves around a flying creature on Monster Island. All she knew was that suddenly she had a new understanding of how the world worked, it wasn't Reed's mental voice in her head, but an echo of it, and she couldn't help but wonder when he'd mentioned this particular fact. "Snakes never have to blink, they'd have an opaque membrane that covers their eyes, and it protects their ocular organs from the airborne irritants like dust and water that we have to blink to either protect our eyes from or clear them of."

As Susan finished her breath she stretched her eyes in a way that she'd never done before creating an organic pair of goggles, and then she dunked her head right back underwater. Not only did it not sting but this time she could see clearly. Putting aside just how useful this would doubtlessly be at picking change off the bottom of pools, right now it was important because it let her wrap an arm around Ben's currently unmoving body and pull him onto dry land as she stretched herself back onto the beach and deposited him next to her. "Ben can you hear me?"

He didn't move, but since Sentry was still recovering this gave Susan a chance to focus on one problem at a time. She leaned Ben's head back , but given that he wasn't responding and from how long he was under that probably meant he had swallowed too much water while he had been under...

Susan mind raced frantically through everything she knew about CPR, the simplest way to describe it would 'not enough' beyond the shadow of a doubt. ABCs that she remembered, Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Airway: she opened Ben's mouth and looked in careful, there certainly didn't seem to be anything in the way. Breathing: not so good, she couldn't noticeably tell his chest going up and down, which lead her right back her needing to give him CPR.

Susan would need to decompress the chest and breath into his mouth, and she was fairly certain it was fifteen of one to every three of the other, but wasn't sure if it was three breaths to fifteen compressions or fifteen breaths to three compressions. If she had to take a guess it was fifteen compressions to three breaths, but she didn't feel like betting Ben's life on that.

More to the point, she wasn't quite sure if she could properly breathe into Ben's mouth at the moment. In her worry she'd want to make sure each one of her breaths carried as much oxygen as possible. Which would be a very bad thing because while Susan lung's could hold enough air to inflate a tire in one go, if she breathed too deeply into Ben's lungs hen they'd pop like balloons, at which point drowning would be the least of his worries.

Susan rolled her tongue around in her mouth, if she waited for Reed to get here then she'd have to risk the possibility that Ben might not be able to hold out that long. There had to be something she could do!

Then for the second time that day, her mind gave her exactly what she wanted, it delighted Susan to such a degree that she wasted a moment pondering the absurdity that some women claimed being pregnant made it hard for them to think! Susan opened her mouth and stuck one finger down her throat, while at the same she elongated and thinned down her tongue sticking it down Ben's.

She carefully manuevered the finger through her body, mirroring its actions with her tongue inside Ben's, hoping like hell her arrangement or organs was enough like an ordinary humans for her plan to work. Then she hit paydirt as she felt her finger reach her lungs, and a few moments later felt her tongue reach Ben's.

Susan plunged it in deeply, increasing its size in the process. Sure enough she could feel the water inside Ben's lungs, but it wasn't going to stay there long. The human tongue could absorb water, she was sure of it, how else would it be possible for the tongue of someone who hadn't drunk anything for a while to feel try? So in turn if Susan made her tongue big enough she could lap up all the water in Ben's lungs!

As she got down to that particular task she couldn't help but contemplate that even if this worked she'd still need a certain amount of luck on her side, and of course if she got extremely lucky Reed would make sure doing this was called the Susan Richards Manuever when he got around to writing textbook about medical procedures that only worked on or for those with superpowers.

After managing to wet her tongue enough that having it in Ben's lungs was probably doing more harm than good from the way it was dripping, she extracted her tongue from his body and using her left hand (since he right was still marking the path from mouth to lung inside her body) she began to squeeze her tongue like a towel, hopping to get it as dry as possible as soon as possible. It was at that point that Ben's eye's opened and he spat up the liquid contense of his other lung all over her.

But seeing as she still had a finger so far down her throat it had reached her lungs, a tongue hanging out that looked like some kind of absurdly bloated pinkish snake, was still dripping wet from her own swim, absurdly pregnant, and wearing only a bikini, a little more water didn't do that much to make her look like something out of a work of abstract art.

"Thanks for the French kiss of life Susy, but let's just keep this between the two of us. Not that I'm afraid of your husband getting jealous, but I can think of at least three guys right of the top of my head who would be willing to half drown themselves to get half that much tounge from you."

Susan sighed and pulled her tongue back behind her teeth swallowing plenty of water in the process as it shrunk to the appropriate size, but it just went to her stomach instead of her lungs making her middle bulge a little more. "Why don't we worry about that after we deal with our mutual metal friend?" Almost the moment the words were out of her mouth, a huge metal foot came down on her like Sentry was crushing a cockroach.

But it'd take a lot more than that to stop Susan, in fact what truly surprised her was just how easy it was to escape, by thinning herself down she was able to slide through the various grains of sand and emerge five feet to the left of where she had been, glad to see that Ben was already in mid-flight. "You know I don't claim to be a genius but most of the time when you break what makes them run machines stop functioning."

Sentry once fixed its ruby gaze at her. "I am no mere machine, I am Sentry. Even the destruction of my primary instrumentation will not stop me." Susan just smirked back, confident that if it tried to crush her again she'd be able to avoid it and launch a counterattack this time around. "Wonderful. But considering that your fancy ray gun isn't working you're going to have to come up with something might fancy if you want to eliminate this particular intruder."

Sentry held out his hands and sections of them slid back another slightly smaller of the ray gun that had emerged from its chest appeared. "Okay credit where credit is due, did not see that coming." It fired them, but Susan quickly half-jumped half-bounced backwards just in time considering the blasts left large holes in the sand where they landed. The guns kept firing blasts of red energy, but Susan kept bouncing away from them, trying to think up a plan in the process.

She didn't want to stay still for any extended period of time or risk taking a laser blast by trying to wrap some part of her body around the weapons in question, but there had to be some way she could take down this Goliath. It was probably something stupidly simple that Reed would have thought of in a heart beat considering that all David had needed was a slingshot and a stone... A slingshot and a stone? A sling shot and a stone!

"That's it, it is official. Forget Reed needing some fancy device, you're obviously all geniuses and telepathic. Because I'm just a blonde-haired theater major who got into college on a scholarship because I was good at swimming. Three flashes of brilliance in one day? Clearly the six of you are acting as my own personal think tank and then passing the ideas to me, so thanks for that, and now I'll go kick some chrome coated butt so that we can get back to having fun with daddy."

Probably as a result of past volcanic activity there were lots and lots of good sized rocks laying around the beaches of Tevo Island. Susan carefully manuevered her next bounce to land behind, and as the Sentry was aiming she scooped it up in both hands and began to spin it around, the rock's speed increasing with each rotation. Centrifugal force was something that she didn't need Reed to explain to her in the slightest.

Susan let go of the rock just before Sentry fired, and her low-tech project slammed into the high tech laser on the thing's right arm while Susan quickly curled herself into the smallest ball she could manage. The laser blasts "missed' her in the sense that all that ended up happening to her was getting slightly warmed up (to a degree that would have left most people with at least second degree burns) and thrown clear by the concussive force.

It was the closest Susan had come to taking a hit from Sentry's lasers, but it been wroth it considering that she'd managed to cut her foes firepower in half. In a perfect demonstration of what doubtlessly qualified as Artificial Stupidity, the Sentry didn't change its tactics at all as Susan took out its other laser with ease, the second rock she hurled at it impacting before the robot could even fire.

It was at this point that Sentry turned around and wordlessly began to walk back into the water. Susan watched it go finally giving her belly the good rubbing it disserved as Ben landed nearby. "Nice going Princess Charming, you even managed to wreck that golem and rescue the brave knight."

Susan blushed and shook her head. "I'll feel safer when that thing is completely out of commission, right now I've got no clue what its doing but if it heads away from us then I guess that's sort of a good thing, isn't it?" She once again stretched out her eyes to improve her vision and saw yellow energy gathering around Sentry's right hand as it stood in what for it was chest deep water.

It then drove that hand into the water and all of a sudden a HUGE wall of water sprung into being heading for them. It was at that point that Susan started rubbing her belly again for all it was worth. "Kids, if you've got another great plan, now would be a fine time to clue me in on it." Sadly just like all the stories said, genies only granted you three wishes.

--

Johnny casually wrapped an arm around Crystal's shoulder, and for her part she didn't seem to mind as the two watched what he personally considered more information packed into less then 120 minutes than he remembered of all four years of highschool history.

"Listen I'm tired of all this snipping and innuendo about how our war effort is anything less than positively impacting up the British Entrenchment situation! It is very difficult to enumerate quantitatively at this juncture in time just how offensive our capabilities are!

But I will tell you one thing, contraceptive to your popular belief, we are taking precautions at every penetration, and by the grace of god, our upcoming THRUST will break through the last membrane of British defence and into Virginia!" "Will this make you the father of our country?" "Well I have cut through some cherry trees in my time to be sure... I can not tell a lie!"

Normally Johnny would have laughed but at this point he just paused the performance to provide some obviously much needed commentary. "Okay Crystal, here's the big picture. One of the famous stories revolving around George Washington was that when he was a kid he cut down this important cherry tree belonging to his father and when his father caught him more or less red handed he owned up to it, leading to him supposedly ever telling a lie for the rest of his life. He was known as a the father of our country mainly because he was the most important general on our side of the Revolutionary War, and our first president.

In this particular case however because of the lead-up to it, 'cut down some cherry trees' brings to mind the expression 'popped some cherries' which is a polite way of saying..." He leaned in close and finished the explanation in a whisper even though there wasn't any one else around to hear. Crystal didn't look shocked, she just looked confused.

"It always comes back to sex doesn't it?" Johnny took his arm off her shoulder and leaned back against the couch. "Not always, sometimes it goes back to violence. But yeah odds are a good 50 to 70 percent of the time if it doesn't make sense it's probably a joke about some kind of sex."

Crystal gazed at him intently. "Why?" That kind of thing was a question for the ages, but as the first human Crystal had ever talked to, it was his duty to at least take a stab at it. "I believe the general consensus is last time I checked because sex is funny. Typically because we're brought and sheltered from it for much of our lives when trying to keep people in the dark about sex is such a futile fight.

No one would be here unless their parents had sex in the first place, squirrels screwing on the branches, birds doing it in the air, sex is everywhere. It's hypocritical, and poking fun at hypocrisy has always been a fertile ground for humor. Not to mention when you get right down to it, the very mechanics involved in sex can be just out and out hilarious, I mean I could do at least 20 minutes of stand up on the stuff I've learned listening to Reed with only one ear."

Then just when all seemed right, tragedy struck. "About him and Susan? Johnny slammed his hands over his ears shaking his head in agony. "Crys, stick a magnet on my head, zap my with 15,000 volts, I need to forget that!" He saw lightening start to dance between Crystal's finger tips, apparently they'd need to go over exaggeration as a form of humor again. "DON'T! DON'T!"

The lightening vanished and Johnny sighed, might as well explain since that was his job today. "Okay Crys, let me make this absolutely clear, preferably by metaphor. How do you feel about Medusa and Blackbolt... being together?" Crystal shrugged. "I'm glad that the two of them are finally back together after Maximus kept them apart so long."

Johnny sighed mightily, this was going to be harder than he had originally thought. "Okay, maybe this would work better if you had an older brother, or maybe it's a chick thing. But listen, among our society, the sexual activities of our older siblings fall under the exact same categories as those of our parents, we don't want to know about them, and we certainly don't want to think about them!

Because we grow up thinking of those people as perfect, and knowing that they actually have carnal desires not only makes them not only less than perfect, but downright disgusting. Our parents and older siblings then return the favor by promising to always think of younger siblings and their children as baby-faced kids, and not sticking their noses' into our bedrooms even though they'll make it a task and a half for us to actually get someone in there with us.

So in conclusion, as far as I'm concerned my sister and my brother-in-law are not doing it." Crystal's green eyes got a little bit wider. "But isn't she..." Johnny held up a hand palm out towards her face in a request for silence. "Living in denial of the truth that is right before our eyes is another fine American tradition.

Some people say that it started back during the American Revolution when we were fighting the mightiest empire in the world and basically believing that we could win on pure pluck alone. Of course it really got its legs during the Cold War when everyone was going along with their lives despite the fact that it'd the entire world could be brought to an end any day of the week just by pressing a couple of buttons.

If we didn't have that ability today, then there's no way we'd be able to enjoy the great tasting, heart clogging cuisine served at so many of our restaurants. So in my own private little world, Victor Von Doom had his, figure it out, blown off during the accident in college and after Reed wound up in his body he had to develop some special kind of artificial sperm based off samples of his blood and then injected that into my sister, and that's how she got pregnant. It worked better then he planned it to and was only trying to make a demonstration of the stuff when it worked which is why she got pregnant before they got married.

That's the reality I live in Crys, and considering how low the rent is I'd appreciate it if you don't evict me from it. So let me spell it out loud and clear just to make sure you've got it down pat, animals having sex funny, people in general having sex, very funny, people related to you have sex, not funny at all and in fact deeply disturbing.

Which brings me back to my original point before you took me off on down that brain scorchingly bad detour. The twenty minutes of stand up was on the subject of what it'd be like if some of the conventions that are seen in animals happened to people as well. For example, once wolves start doing it, they can't actually come apart until they finish, which would probably make for some very awkward moments if you got caught halfway through in the closet."

The only response Johnny got was wide uncomprehending green eyes. "Right, that's clearly advanced material, so let's get back to the subject at hand, the Revolutionary War." However as Johnny went for the remote there was flash of orange light and Lockjaw appeared in front of the TV and let lose with a loud bark.

Johnny lay back on the couch and hung his head in defeat. "Let me guess, that's your way of telling us that Timmy is trapped in the well, again?" Crystal's gaze moved slowly back and forth between Lockjaw and Johnny. "Susan and the others are in danger, we need to help them!" Johnny nodded as he slowly stood up transforming in the process. "All right then Scooby, lead the way."

--

Reed arrived just in time to see Sentry generate the tidal wave, which was now heading towards them a depressingly fast pace. "I don't suppose you know how to outthink a tidal wave do you?" Reed raised his hands palms out. "I'm going to start firing concussion blasts, for whatever they're worth, and when it comes in, Susan curl yourself into a ball for Ben to carry up above the rest of the wave and I'll try to 'jump' at just the right time to limit how bad the impact is."

It was at that point that an orange glow suddenly appeared next to them and Johnny and Crystal stepped out of it. "So what seems to the be the HOLY HELL! Can we grab another portal out of here, like right now!"

Reed shook his head sadly. "No, we need to permanently disable Sentry, the robot causing this, and hopefully retrieve the Pogo plane before we can think about escaping. Crystal, try and do what you can to stop the tidal wave using your elemental powers. Susan slight change of plans, right before the wave comes in..." "Wrap myself around you guys for whatever that is worth?" "More or less." So that's just what they did.

Crystal and Reed worked their respective abilities against the wave, and when its fully cast the five of them in its shadow Susan quickly wrapped herself around them before reaching out with her arms to grab hold of two palm trees that should do at least something to prevent them from getting carried out to sea.

Then the wave hit them, she road it out feeling the wave slam into her, (it wasn't _that_ bad) wash over her (she had plenty of air in her lungs and hoped there was enough for the four people inside her as well) and then finally depart. She uncoiled herself and fell upon the soggy sand, her flanks heaving. "That wasn't fun, I'm gonna start cashing in on the maternity leave I would have started using a few months ago if I wasn't crazy, you four deal with the giant robot."

Johnny nodded as he carefully stepped away form his sister's body. "All right then, so where has said robot gotten to?" A moment later a large boulder slammed into him and everyone turned their attention towards the direction it had to have come from. Sentry had apparently headed back in land when while the wave had been headed that way.

Crystal let lose with a blast of purple energy that struck just above the Sentry's head causing them to come loose and creating a miniature rockslide that carried Sentry down to the beach before leaving him buried A moment later Johnny pushed aside the boulder he'd been hit by. "Ouch, I'm pretty sure its a safe bet that I just got my warranty voided."

Before any of them could act further Sentry emerged from the rocks that it had been buried under, but no sooner had it stood up to its full height then Crystal let loose with another blast of the purple energy and the ground caved in beneath Sentry's feet. "There, I'm pretty sure I got him that time." Unfortunately while Sentry didn't seem likely to be climbing back above ground any time soon, the cure might just prove worse than the disease given the shaking they were all starting to feel beneath their feet.

"Crystal, your seismic powers probably just kick-started the volcano beneath Tevo island. Before you even ask Johnny, yes now it is safe to say that we've officially reached the point that we can run away first and ask questions later. Crystal if you could have Lockjaw create a portal for us back to the Baxter Building, I think we'd all appreciate it." Crystal nodded an a moment later the large brown dog was once again in their midst, his antenna giving off light before an orange portal appeared.

The group quickly moved passed through it, at which point they took a moment to catch their breath and take stock of things as they once again found themselves back inside the Baxter Building and perfectly safe. "Well there goes your new plane Reed." Reed nodded sadly. "Yes, not to mention that case full of vacation supplies." Susan nodded along with the other two. "Yes, and lets not forget our vacation in general."

Johnny looked at the three other members of the Fantastic Four and then looked away in a hurry. "And I'm pretty sure I just lost my libido for at least a week." Several glances were sent in his direction and Johnny shivered. "Listen, if it wouldn't be asking too much now that none of us are in mortal peril, could my very, very, very pregnant sister please, please, please, switch into something a bit more concealing?" Susan blushed and quickly slithered from the room.

--

"You know I'm a bit offended at the fact that you decided you need your armor to carry me around." It was two days after the group's return from Tevo island and aside from everyone doing their own little parts to pitch in and teach Crystal how to be 'properly human' the status quo had been more or less perfectly regained.

"Well I wanted to make sure not to drop you, and like this you're light as a feather." Susan decided she wasn't going to ask what metaphor her husband would use to describe her weight when he wasn't wearing armor especially designed to let him lift a couple tons when he had a proper leverage.

"So what's this present that you've got for me, and why are we taking the elevator down instead of heading for the lab?" Reed just smiled (he wasn't wearing the iron facemask though he did have the rest of his armor on) down at her. "Wait and see Sue, wait and see." Reed had positioned himself to prevent Susan from seeing what floor he had selected to send their elevator on the way to, though he didn't have bothered, since she didn't have that much knowledge of which floor of the building contained what.

Then finally the elevator's door beeped and Reed walked out still carrying Susan in both of his gauntleted hands. "I decided that since our efforts to take a vacation outside the Baxter Building had a somewhat abrupt and unpleasant conclusion, we might have more luck trying to relax a little close to home. So behold, the Baxter Building's Olympic size swimming pool."

Reed gently eased Susan onto her feet, which to her and just about everyone else's surprise still managed to support her fairly well. But then it as probably only due to the fact that her elastic limbs generally seemed stronger than normal human ones that she could still move about bipedally.

Susan looked at it, then twisted her neck around so that Reed could see her own grin. "Nice. You didn't build all this for me though, right? I mean there's no way I could have gotten all this built in under 48 hours." Reed shook his head and slowly began to remove his armor revealing that he had nothing but a pair of swim trunks on underneath.

"This has been in the blueprints since I first created them. Seeing as I was more or less haemorrhaging money at the time, I decided the cost of this pool was nothing to worry about next to the rest of the building and so I might as well get one just in case someone wanted it. That and it seemed like it would have been a shame not to get a pool to go along with everything else we have in this place.

It's heated by the way in case you were wondering." Susan undid the twist in her neck so that she could throw one in her torso instead. This stretch might have been taking things a bit too far however as Susan was suddenly much more aware of how far removed her center of gravity was from its normal position. "All that water and me without my swimsuit. I hope you're not about to suggest I wear my birthday suit instead, since there isn't exactly a door to lock to keep people from coming in here through the elevator."

Reed walked over to the wall and opened a panel by the elevator. "Actually, there is a system for 'locking out' certain floors, I designed it with the intent of hamstringing intruders, but it could be equally efficient for a few other purposes." He swung the panel closed without making use of the complicated interface that lay behind which doubtlessly only Reed Richards knew how to properly comprehend or command.

"But that'd be taking the long way around to something that has a much more simple solution. Remember our unstable molecule uniforms are airtight and dry very quickly. You could still very easily go swimming in the entire outfit or just the undergarments, after all its the same material I made your swimsuit out of." Susan stretched out her arms so that she could cross them over her pregnant belly.

"Which in turn begs the question of why bother designing that swimsuit for me in the first place?" Reed walked over, and kissed Susan's cheek so that he didn't unbalance her the way that trying to kiss her lips probably would have. "I believe the technical answer to that question would be 'because I could' as of the last time I checked."

Susan smiled then righted herself, breathing a sigh of relief to once again have her knees pointing towards instead of away from her center of gravity. I don't see how I can argue with that, and since you were kind enough to go down to show some skin I think I will as well."

Susan slowly began to strip down to her bra and panties, then took one slow tentative step after another towards the edge of the pool. She took a moment to examine her reflection in the water, felt a slight unexpected push and that was all it took to get to make her belly drag the rest of her body forward.

Susan fell face first into the water with a loud "SPLASH" but she didn't sink anywhere near as deeply as she thought she would. Susan righted herself so that she was more or less properly treading water, coughing and spluttering for a few moments before she got words out. "That was totally uncalled for."

Reed just smirked down at her. "Well given your current condition how you might have had some trouble climbing down a ladder to get in, so I decided to give the necessary push. How is the water?" Susan lowered her neck slightly to half swallow significantly more water than your average human mouth could hold. Then she promptly looked back at her husband and spat it at him with about the same amount of force as water came out of your average garden hose.

"It's good, which is significantly more than I can say about you at the moment." Reed blinked his eyes clear then shrugged, and then calmly did a more or less textbook dive into the pool creating significantly fewer ripples in the water than Susan's entrance had. His head popped back up above water a few moments later a smile on his face. "So how does it feel to finally go swimming again?" Susan wrapped her arms around her belly but kept kicking with her feet, allowing her to maintain her position.

"A little weird. I mean I feel a lot lighter than I expected to, though something tells me that, ehh might as well test the theory for myself since I'm in the right position to do so..." She tried to position herself flat in the water so that she could preform, well just about any standard stroke that involved pulling her body forward with her arms, but was unsuccessful. Instead she found herself bouncing up and down in the water like a buoy that had been struck by a wave.

"Yep, that's what I thought would happen." For some reason despite how heavy and awkward her belly was on land, it was awkwardly 'light' (in the sense of buoyant) in the water. "Well Susan like most things in life it comes down to some fairly simple science." Susan crossed her arms over her belly and then elongated her neck so that it was resting on top of her belly as well.

"All right then, tell me more." Reed nodded, since it was probably going to be a very cold day in hell before Reed Richards gave up his love of explaining things. "Well at the end of the day how well something or someone floats is directly dependant upon their density, and density is a ratio of mass against volume.

And while you're not as light on your feet as you used to be, obviously being pregnant has caused your body's volume to increase as well. You can stop kicking your legs any time you want by the way Susan, if you can't force your belly into being fully submerged then the odds are against gravity having any more luck on its own."

Susan stilled her legs, and though she might have gone possibly an inch deeper into the water than she previously had been, obviously she did in fact have a rather unique form of floating device working in her favor. "Okay, so now I suppose the question that needs to be pondered is, so how the heck am I gonna move around this pool..."

Reed just shrugged before taking off in a fairly standard front crawl leaving Susan to wobble back and forth in his wake. For her part, Ultra Woman contemplated the idea of trying to figure out just how well she could backstroke in her current condition, but then decided if she'd been suppose to move about like a normal pregnant woman then fate wouldn't have been kind/cruel enough to give her superpowers.

So in the blink of an eye her upper body took of stretching across the water and in a few moments she had she had her arms wrapped around Reed's legs. "Gotcha..." Reed twisted around slowly so that he was laying on his back allowing him to easily float even with his lower body constricted. "That's not very sporting of you." Susan just shrugged. "Well then, now you know how I felt about that push into the water.

This way I can forget about how pregnant I am, in fact, why even bother with letting that thing lay their and bob up and down in the water?" Susan found it surprisingly easy to lift her belly out of the water even without anything firm to balance the rest of her body against. She further increased the distance between her breasts and belly, before safely lowering said belly onto the side of the pool. Susan gave a quick nod of approval at the completion of her chosen task before a quick smile came to her lips.

"If I'm gonna look so serpentine I might as well finish the job..." She retraced her legs into her belly and then lifted it back into the air and shaking it a few times. The sound of liquids sloshing back and forth didn't have much in common with the warning rattle of the snake which was named that particular aspect of its tail, but it was the best she could do on short notice.

"Very nice Susan, but rattlesnakes tend to be found in deserts rather than near large bodies of water..." Susan pulled her arms into her body as well releasing Reed from her grip. "Maybe so, and I bet next you're going to tell me how they use poisonous venom to deal with their prey instead of construction.

But after that of course comes the fun part where I tell you just how little I care about such things when there's fun to be had. Now then I'm gonna take a nice deep breath and by the time I'm done my lungs should be holding about as much air as your average scuba tank. Then without my kids getting in the way I shouldn't have too much trouble submerging myself, and you go back to swimming laps, and then... well if you feel something slowly working its way up one of your legs don't worry, it's me."

--

So Reed swam laps and thought about various things, though fear was pretty high up on the list. Susan was "running silent" if he remembered the correct military phrase, and given the absence even a tell-tale trail of bubbles, he certainly wouldn't have been able to make out her head among the various other strands of pink flesh stretched out under the pool.

Which left him with just his thoughts the sound of his strokes. So why was it that every single time he felt some part of his body rub up against some part of hers, he felt a shiver of apprehension go through his body?

It was clearly a visceral gut reaction (since there was no logical reason for him to be afraid of Susan in the water any more than on land) so what was causing it? Answers came reasonably quickly. For one thing, humans were somewhat unique among primates in that they had bodies which could float, and swim proficiently, thus on some level any human would probably be prone to feeling out of their element while submerging themselves in water deeper then they were tall.

It didn't help that even though superheroics (and a very active sex life) had done wonders for Reed's endurance, it had still be a long time since he'd done any serious swimming. Amoebas were naturally water dwelling creatures, and as for snakes, well there weren't any with gills, but there were snakes that tended to stick to water only a little less fervently than dolphins did.

So here he was out of his element knowingly getting stalked by a creature that was much suited for its current environment, it would have been foolhardy if his mind wasn't blaring alarms every which way. Then he saw a slight ripple in the after and by the time he turned his head to more carefully examine it, he was far too late.

--

About a minute later Reed's head broke the surface of the water as he once again went about the process of drawing oxygen from the air around him. Luckily, Susan's elastic lips were ideal for forming an airtight seal which let him draw from the excess oxygen in her lungs, but that hadn't made the sensation any less unnerving.

"If we keep going along those lines Susan I think we are going to need to take some precautions to make sure no one interrupts us." Susan's head came above water as well and she nodded swiftly. "All right then, but you might want to get your swim trunks back on before you leave the pool, you tread water, I'll go see if I can figure out where I misplaced them." She drew in another deep breath and then dipped her head back below the surface of the water. Ahh sweet anticipation.

AN: The Reduced Shakespear Company does in fact exist, the lines in this fic are perfectly transcribed straight from the material mentioned, any accidental deviation is my fault, all of their productions are quite excellent, see them live if you can, check their website for more details.

Being male I can't actually tell you what it feels like to be pregnant in a swimming pool, just extrapolating from how other people have portrayed in a few works of fiction.

Also do not attempt the Susan Richards Manuever unless you are capable of licking your own toes while keeping your knees perfectly straight. If you fail that simple test you should probably stick to CPR which is (assuming the person in need of it isn't a child) three breaths, fifteen chest compressions, followed by three more breaths and an examination of if the subject's chest has started rising on its own before you do any more. Why do I know this? Because when I'm not behind the keyboard I'm also an Eagle Scout (well am/was I forget if you stop being considered an Eagle Scout and just say you reached the rank after you leave scouting, either way I'm calling a technicality of saying I still am an Eagle Scout because any of you who have reached that rank know that the experiences along the way, yadda, yadda, yadda, never forget them, yadda, yadda, yadda, you all get the idea) which teaches you all kinds of information you hope you'll never have to use.


	16. Chapter 16

AN: Thanks to Wolvmbm for his review, and now on with the chapter!

Swelling With Love chapter 16: Acquisitions, in which Reed Richards thinks about buying something new so he can take it apart.

"You know what I'd like to do Reed?" Susan Richards, to the best of her knowledge the worlds only pregnant superheroine (certainly the only one who was into her third trimester) was currently laying in the bed she and her husband shared, a place she had started to spend more and more time in over the last few months. Granted, that probably had something to do with her pregnant belly which had also been growing larger and larger. Luckily thanks to her surprisingly empathetic (or maybe not considering he was psychic) she hadn't spent that much time in there alone.

At the moment as she was speaking, he was serenely stroking her belly, sending tingles of joy through her. "What Sue?" Susan sighed and stretched out her body from her breasts upwards, wrapped it around Reed's shoulder's and pulled him in close. "Well I'd always had this list of things I dreamed about doing when we got married and I got pregnant, granted I imagined it happening in that order, but that's crying over spilled milk at the moment.

Anyway, I always imagined at some point he two of us would go and buy some nice secluded place in the country, where we and the kids could go to get away from it all, I guess it must sound kind of silly right now." Susan's grip on Reed's shoulders was extremely loose, but then constriction wasn't the point, letting him to rub his body up against hers in any manner he desired was.

"It's more sweet then silly, probably your mother bird reflex acting up in fact." Susan looked very intently at her lover. "So lets see, mammals, amoebas, reptiles, and now birds, if you can find a way to add fish and amphibians to that list then you'll have compared to every single type of animal there is."

Reed leaned forward and kissed her. "Well Susan, that's because you're so beautiful that you transcend simple boundaries like species, I think Gale would agree with me by the way..." Reed waited a moment to see if his mentioning the two's "adopted dragon" would have an adverse affect on Susan's mood, but once he was sure it was all clear, he continuned.

"Anyway, as I was saying, like a mother bird you want to go and build a nest for your offspring. Besides, if anything that particular desire makes even more sense now then did before we got our powers. Considering how much media attention we've already drawn it probably wouldn't hurt to have some place to call our own that's off the beaten path.

Of course it probably wouldn't be anywhere near as proof against supervillians as the Baxter Building is, but then that's not the threat you're most worried about at the moment is it?" Susan snickered, flexing her elastic body slightly. "Supervillians, hah, bring em on, I'll pummel witless without ever needing to get my legs out of bed. But the press, not only are they more determined to get what they want than most supervillians, and they're also infinitely harder to get rid of."

Reed leaned in close nuzzling and licking her neck. "Considering the experiences I've had in the last few months of my life I must conclude that you're absolutely correct. Not to mention that having a place without any civilians nearby would let me try out a few more experiments which would be thoroughly out of the question in our current domicile." Susan quickly rejoined the conversation before her husband could get carried away and start listing what exactly each and every single one of those experiments would be.

"I'm glad to know you like the idea, it probably wouldn't hurt to have some place I could go and spend sometime reminding myself that I'm about to become a mother and when that time comes, well I can probably balance it with being a superheroine, it'll just take some practice.

I'd be able to finish plumping up in peace if nothing else, it's not that the Baxter Building isn't a fine place to live, it just always seems to feel like a headquarters for the Fantastic Four first and our homes second." Reed playfully patted Susan's swollen middle. "Your hardly 'plumping up' as you callously put it."

Susan elongated her neck a little wrapping it around Reed's own to look at him eye to eye. "Really, then what am I doing?" Reed leaned in towards her head as he spoke, the look in his eyes silently daring her to take his tongue the same way she had the first night they'd shared together with Reed in his current body. "Your ripening, an already succulent dish growing ever sweater as it starts to all but burst with life."

"And congratulations, not content to stick with just animals you've now found a way to sensually compare me to a plant. I'm not sure if I should be honored by your dedication or just a little creped out by the prospect of trying to guess what analogy you are going to come up with next."

That said, Susan couldn't stop grinning even as the words came through her lips. "Well are you going to claim that it's not an apt comparison?" Susan looked down at what had become of her once trim physique, she'd known that motherhood did a number on a woman's figure, but she'd never quite expected what a large number it would end up being for her.

"Well considering that I've been more or less wearing this outfit day in day out for quite a while now, I guess I do sort of look like some kind of human sized blueberry.." Reed began to trace gentle circles around her belly button. "Seeing as the Fantastic Four are more financially secure then ever if you wanted to buy yourself a new civilian wardrobe I'd hardly object."

Susan tried not to blush at the pleasure Reed's gentle fingers were bringing her. "Not that I'd normally object to the idea of clothes shopping, but in my current condition it is hardly my idea of a good time. Besides, it'd take me forever to find anything that compliments my current figure the way this thing does, with the added cherry on top of I hopefully wouldn't have any use for it once I give birth. So all things considered I might as well just stick with unstable molecules."

The pressure Reed was putting on her body became a bit more intense, not painful, just crossing the line from soothing to teasing. "Or if you're trying to get back to your roots you could consider wearing nothing at all." Susan stretched out an arm and momentarily slapped Reed's hands away from her belly. "I can't believe you'd even suggest such a thing, I've got my children to consider, and if they're anything like their mother it probably doesn't take much of a dip in temperature to make them feel out of sorts."

Reed went right back to preforming the exact same act he had before Susan had playfully shooed him away from her body. "Even if you had me to keep you warm?" Susan's arms grew longer and longer before she wrapped them protectively about her belly. "You'd have to keep all of us warm."

Both of Reed's hands were working away at Susan's flesh, which unlike that of most women in her condition felt quite a long way from stretched to its very limits. "Perhaps in this new house we're going to get I could set up a special hot room just for us where the temperature never drops below ninety degrees farenheight?

Of course in such conditions it wouldn't take much for the human body to work up a sweat, but catching a cold would be the least of our worries." Susan allowed herself a quick lurid fantasy of lounging naked while her husband alternated between feeding her hand picked grapes and satisfying certain other bodily appetites. "Tell you what, you build the room I'll bring the womb."

With surprising audacity Reed leaned his neck a little further in the direction of Susan's own and began to nibble on one of her ears. Almost instantly Susan's hormone filled body went into overdrive as she felt a by now quite familiar dampness between her legs. Ironically the first actual sentence she managed to get out sounded exactly like something Reed would say if he was her place. "That can't taste very good."

She felt Reed's toung slide into her ear, luckily this didn't impede his ability to communicate psychically. /Then I am saddened to say you have no idea just how sweet the taste of true love is.\ Susan wasn't about to argue with him, or try to find out for herself, she'd thought it before and she would again, she was the only woman she knew who had to worry about making sure to be gentle with her husband when they were in bed.

Somehow amidst the strengthening haze of pleasure she managed to successfully form and voice words once again. "I think I finally figured out why this is happening to me." Reed withdrew his tongue almost instantly and stopped chewing on her ear, every inch the scientist. "Why?" She patted her belly with one hand and Reed's wrapped the other around Reed's midsection. "Simple, apparently you and my body decided to get in a game of chicken without telling me. Your determined to prove that you love me no matter what shape my body is in, and it's evidently determined to turn me into something so bloated with babies that no one could possibly love it.

Every time I grow bigger you just find more and more elaborate ways of proving your love for me, and so it responds by making me grow even bigger, to which you respond by throwing yourself at me even more intensely. At the rate you two are going at it before I give birth I'll wind up wedged between the floor and the ceiling."

In a response Reed began to repeatedly press a single finger against Susan's extended neck as if he was strumming a guitar, and it would have been lying to say it didn't generate some pleasant vibrations. "Well, when a man truly focuses his mind on pleasing his wife and has one as obliging, open to trying new positions, and approaches as you are, there isn't much that can stop him, and a belly that size isn't one of them."

As if to empahsize his point Reed (probably with a little help from his telekinesis managed to roll Susan over so that instead of laying on her side she was one her back. Or at least almost on her back, Susan's bed was more or less liberally sprinkled with about half a dozen pillows to make sure she avoided ever finding herself laying flat on her back regardless of circumstance. "Besides, I spent half a year loving you without ever seeing your face, without ever hearing your voice, without ever feeling your body, just coming to know the nature of your mind and your soul and loving you for those things.

Because of that, if you want me to I will always be able to find you sexually attractive Susan, always." As he spoke Reed clambered on top of her and if Susan had possessed a normal human body then this probably have put a rather disquieting (or even outright painful) amount of pressure on certain parts of it. "You know Reed, there are times that a girl might find conviction like that a little disturbing, even from her husband." Of course Reed's position did give him one big advantage, he could rub Susan's belly with his knees and legs leaving his upper body free for other things.

"Then I suppose I'll just have to prove it to. If you don't always feel in the mood I'll understand, but Susan as your husband I feel like I'd be falling you if I wasn't doing everything in my power to make you feel like the sexiest woman who ever lived." Susan sighed, a small smile tugging at her lips. "That's a pretty big task from where I'm sitting."

Reed motioned and Susan allowed her neck to come a little closer, at which point he kissed her. "Well being the man responsible for the first civilian spaceflight was a pretty big task also, but I managed to succeed, even if not quite as I originally intended. Suffice to say, I've got some experience in that field, it's simply a matter of taking things one step at a time."

As Reed spoke her carefully contorted his body (granted nowhere near as drastically as Susan could her own even in its present condition) so that he could use his knees to massage Susan's lower belly and his hands to work on the top half. "Now then, even if your powers, pregnancy, or some combination of the two made you swell up into a ball, do you know what I'd do?"

Laying on her back in her current condition always left Susan feeling slightly unsettled (of course she wasn't anywhere near as immobile or helpless as she looked but that didn't keep her body from telling her instinctively that she was trapped) but Reed's voice and actions were lulling her back into a comfortable state of serene euphoria.

"What?" "I'd rotate you around till I found where your face was wrap my arms as far around you as they could go, and kiss you again and again. To the greatest extent I could manage, I'd wrap my body around yours and savor the unique sensation that comes with the contact of your flesh against mine. For however many times this makes it I say it again, there's not one single way you could stretch or find yourself stretched that would make me fall out of love with you Susan Richards." Susan sniffed slightly a single tear starting to form in her left eye, but as she blinked it away a very different look starting occupy her face.

"Reed, that is doubtlessly the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. Sadly at the moment the most cognisant reply I seem to be able to come up with is, give me a moment to get naked and then take me like the boneless blob I am." Reed stopped massaging Susan's middle and rolled off of it, landing quite comfortably right back on their bed.

"I'll respond the same way I always do when you try and are unable to measure up to me in terms of mental prowess, I don't expect everyone to live up to my lofty standards, just to try and make use of what they have." With Reed no longer on top of her belly Susan was easily able to stretch out her arms and disrobe herself as Reed removed his own garments.

Then she increased the length of her belly turning it into less of a fixture in the middle of her body, and more of a large sphere connected by a long strand of flesh that promptly landed on with a small "splosh" on the floor. This in turn allowed Reed to position himself on top of her like normal, or at least as normal as intercourse ever got between an amorphous woman and a man with psychic powers. For example, just as Reed was about to get down to business, Susan pulled a fast one on him, pulling back her belly causing it to land on his back.

Of course it did him about as much long term damage as being hit with a giant water balloon, but it still caused him to emit a yelp of surprise as the weight pressing down on him caused him to plunge into his wife a bit ahead of schedule.

"Enjoying yourself?' He asked the question about as innocently as he got and received a not very innocent at all smile back from his wife. "Rather." "You realize that having a considerable weight placed on my back is bound to somewhat impede my ability to properly make love to you."

"I'm aware, but where's the proof that you really care for me if making love to me is easy?" Reed sighed and persevered onwards, after all there was a world of difference between something being harder then normal and being outright impossible.

--

"So how are we gonna solve this problem Reed? I mean you did realize that when you were inviting all of us to take a look at this house you picked out, that 'all of us' now includes Crystal, and the Fantasticar only has four seats, right?"

Reed slowly shifted his glance between the Fantasticar, and the four people standing behind him. "I'll admit the fact might have slipped my mind Johnny, but we've all been fairly busy recently. Besides, there are numerous ways that we could resolve this particular problem..."

Before Reed could go any further, Johnny who had brought up that particular problem to his attention in the first place raised his own unique solution. "Well I'm sure me and Crys could share seats even if it'd be a tight fit..." Several less than amused glances were sent in his direction.

"Or I could just use these wings of mine and let the lady make herself at home in my seat." Crystal blushed profusely at Ben's offer and shook her head slowly. "Umm, given my control over air, I could fly along side the Fantasticar just as easily and wouldn't have to worry about the turbulence as much."

Susan let lose with a long sigh, she'd gotten tired of just standing around, so she just turned her legs into defacto stilts, and took one very long step before she was comfortably seated. Then she stretched out her neck so she didn't have to shout to be heard easily b the others. "Okay, let's not let this turn into one long superpowered version of 'no I insist, after you' which causes us not to get out of here until the sun goes down.

Reed you and I will share seats so Crystal can have mine. Anyone feel like objecting?" Four heads were shaken, and everyone soon took their necessary places. Of course sitting next to caused her belly to take up not most of her own lap, but also a significant portion of Reed's, and that was just the first problem they faced.

Reed slowly held up the seatbelt on his side of the seat looking at where it was supposed to be buckled in, a task that would have been quite easy if his wife's unborn children hadn't been occupying the space lay between the two. "Susan would you mind..." She took the seat belt from his hands with a wide smile on her face. "I think I can do one better than trying to pull that thing across both of us. Observe..."

Her right hand which was holding onto the seatbelt that Reed had passed her began to shift and alter its form until there was some inaudible, invisible sign that satisfied her. Then she lengthen her left arm as it moved over towards the connector that the seatbelt was suppose to click into.

Her hand slowly entered that opening, and a few moments later she tugged it, apparently felt it was secure, then leaned back with a confident smile on her face. "There we go, I think that's the two of us safely buckled in." Reed looked at this unorthodox arrangement in surprise for a few moments before he managed a quick nod as well.

"I'd prefer a less organic means of protection where the safety of our children and my wife are involved, but I suppose that's what the shield system is for after all, not to mention worrying about protecting my elastic wife and children from the danger of a collision is sort of like worrying about trying to protect a duck from water because you're afraid they'll will drown. Suffice to say, it's a waste of effort."

Susan turned and kissed Reed on the cheek, using her powers ever so slightly in the process. "More or less, but it's still cute to see that you care. So..." Susan quickly rotated her head to get a good look at what was going on around her before she finished the sentence.

"Since it looks like everyone is ready shall we be on our way?" Reed nodded before leaning and looking back as best he could. "Ben, since my current position isn't exactly ideal for task, would you mind steering if I navigate for you?" Ben tightly gripped the controls and smiled. "Might as well. Guess its just like I said, a girl would need a straight jacket if she was going to get you out of the lab..."

--

As the Fantasticar set down, the group got a good look at the building that Reed was thinking about purchasing for the first time. It looked sort of like a large golden spider, its floor just barely seemed to touch the ground given four long legs that supported the rest of the building.

"Okay that's weird. So Reed how exactly is this entire inspection tour going to work?" Reed shrugged as he helped Susan out of the Fantasticar, though she still ended up using her powers to ease along the process. "The realestate agent I talked to said that the place is more or less fully stocked with all the modern conveniences, so we can basically move in and live there for a day or two, barring supervillian activity, and if we like it then we'll buy it since the cost is effectively pencil dust." "Pencil dust?"

Crystal said it inquisitively and Reed nodded as the phrase was spoke aloud for the third time. "Pencil dust, referring to the stuff you blow away after you rub something out with an eraser. In this case, barring that one unfortunate instance, we now once again have and should remain in possession of proverbially more money than we know what to do with.

Forget houses we could buy a baseball team if we wanted to, possibly even build one from the ground up though I'd have to check since I'm pretty sure someone somewhere would get upset about New York having three baseball teams, so it'd probably be easier to buying that already exists." This statment had the expected effect. "Oh, can we buy the Mets?"

Okay not exactly expected effect, normally Susan would have just shrugged off Johnny's statements or told him to be quite, but this time curiosity got the better of her. "Why exactly would you want to buy a baseball team that's more or less universally known for being not as good as the other baseball team in New York?"

Just like she expected, Johnny straight away had an explanation for his illogical desires. "Well Spiderman once told me he's a Mets fan, so I figured what could be better then being able to wave how rich I am in his face by telling him I own his favorite baseball team?"

Everyone (even Crystal) promptly gave him a very, very telling glance and he just shrugged. Susan seeing that this particular tangent was over and done with retook ownership of the conversation. "Scintillating as all of that was, when I asked the question of 'how exactly is this going to work' I really meant how exactly do we get into this thing, because I don't see a door."

A moment later amid the sounds of whirring machinery, a section of the house slid downwards creating a gangplank for them to walk upwards into the house. "Well that's convenient." Ben's wings began to flap slightly. "Convenient is one word for it I suppose. Does anyone else feel that 'suspicious' might work just as well?"

Reed nodded as he began to walk forward up said gangplank. "Still, one way or another we'll never known unless we take a look around so we'll just have to show a modicum of situational awareness as always." Susan tried to follow Reed up the gangplank, 'tried' being the operative word because while steps were just a matter of properly lengthening her legs, walking at an incline while pregnant was tricky.

While the incline of the house wouldn't have presented her with any problems normally, being eight months pregnant with six kids was another matter all together. Suffice to say, Susan went through the prerequisite motions of waving her hands about for the blink of an eye in a vain attempt to steady herself before landing on her backside in the grass. "Whoops, guess I'll need to get a bit creative if I'm gonna get inside..."

Of course lengthening her body and slithering up the gangplank hardly qualified as that creative for Susan since it and bouncing were her two favorite ways of using her power to move about at a rapid pace. Once she was inside the others followed with varying degrees of hesitation. As he entered Johnny looked slowly this way and then that craning his neck all the while. "Wow, I mean really, wow. Did this guy who built this thing lose track of his straight edge or something?"

Reed looked around slowly as well before sighing. "It certainly is very unique." Barring the floor, the building didn't seem to have a single straight lines. The walls were all curved, and there seemed to be at least half a dozen more of them then were necessary. Not to mention said walls were the same golden color as the outside of the house and seemed to be made of some kind of weird building material that even Reed couldn't place off the top of his head.

--

Susan was slowly making her way around the house, checking out all the rooms and as she waddled her way into yet another she found that her husband was going at a nearby wall with some kind of blowtorch. "So do are you trying to achieve something in particular, or are you just trying to make yourself at home?"

Reed had (unsurpringly) been wearing a pair of welding goggles as he worked, turned around he lifted them from his face after turning of the torch. "Well Susan, I was told that this particular house has state of the art security so I was determined to find out just what it amounted to."

Susan couldn't help but smile at him. "You know, you're sort of taking crevet empior a little far aren't you?" Reed shrugged as he pulled off a section of the wall revealing a complicated circuit board behind it. "Is it really so much to ask for that I get to know what I'm buying before I pay money for it? It's just like taking a car for a test drive after all."

As always Reed's eccentricity amused Susan, even when it got the better of his common sense. "Might I suggest a different analogy that might be used to describe this particular situation? You're thinking about buying a car, so you take it for a test drive back to your garage, at which point you open up the hood and start taking apart the engine. Now, you may have every intention of putting the engine back together, and you might just be capable of it, but you're still probably going to lose our safety deposit somewhere along the way."

Either the security system was more complex then Reed thought it was, or Susan was a more engrossing conversationalist than she thought. Either way he did something that was evidently wrong, and a giant glass dome suddenly descended form the ceiling slamming down on top of Susan crushing her into an uncomfortable looking puddle of cerulean ooze beneath it.

Reed of course at once raced over he carefully tapped at the dome, first with his bare hands and then with a telekenetic blow that would have been plenty strong enough to shatter actual glass. The dome was unaffected by both however, which understandably had a detrimental effect upon his emotional stability. "Susan!"

The large blob slowly began to spread out, growing arms, legs, a head, and by and large transforming into a pregnant woman who remained trapped at the moment. "Reed, I can hear you, can you hear me?" He nodded vigorously. "Think about what that means for a moment."

Reed did, and then let loose with a very deep sigh. "If the sounds of our voices are reaching the other's ears then this thing isn't airtight. Which means that it has about as much chance of holding you, as a bucket with a large hole in it does of holding water." Susan nodded as she slowly began to work her hands along the edge of the dome. "Got it in one, granted for you that's par for the course. Once again, it's cute as hell to see you getting all flustered about my safety, but its going to take me around ten or twenty seconds to figure out how to get out of here."

Her fingers slipped under the dome, and true enough about ten seconds later the rest of her body had followed suit. As if it'd only been kept in place by some sort of pressure sensor detecting Susan's body pressing down on it, once she'd left the dome it retracted back into the ceiling in the blink of an eye.

Susan lay on the floor looked up at the invisible panel in the ceiling from which that dome had emerged, and promptly stuck out her tongue at it. Then, apparently deciding that the gesture wasn't quite forceful (or immature) enough she expanded her tongue till it was about as long and thick as her right arm.

Only after doing that did she pull her tongue back behind her teeth, so as to more easily mock her opponent with words. "Hah! You're gonna have to try harder than that to get the better of me!" Reed looked back at the panel he'd been working on then got down on his knees next to his pregnant wife.

"While I'm glad that you escaped Susan, I'm less than ecstatic with what I just saw. Unless my memory is off, then the size of that dome, it was too small to have been used as a way of capturing a normal human. It's like..." Susan hung her head till her chin was on the ground. "Whoever built this place had us in mind and in the sense that they're not exactly fans to say the least.

Damn, first our vacation and now this, life is so much simpler when we show up to deal with supervillians in the middle of some act of supervilliany instead of them getting the jump on us." Reed just nodded, stood up and walked over to the control panel. He played around with it some more, and this time he avoided triggering any booby traps n the process. He stepped away from the panel and placed the section of the wall that he'd removed back over it.

"There, that should disable the building's security features..." Susan lifted up her neck and extended it over so that she could see (if not exactly comprehend) what Reed was doing. "Isn't disabling all of them a bit much?" Reed shrugged as he turned away from he replaced panel. "I'll reactivate them when we leave, and until then it's not like this place needs security measures against most things with us living in it. More importantly, if we do get attacked they seem far more likely to be used against us than to be used to help us."

Since she could find no reasonable counterargument to that line of reasoning, Susan retracted her neck and slowly stood back up. "Well then, why don't we try and figure out where exactly the master bedroom is in this place, and see what we think of it.

If it doesn't, I heard that a mister Esher just put a wonderful house on the market, none of this overuse of curved lines and gangplank business, plain old fashionable reasonable stairs, stairs every which way the eye cares to look in fact."

Reed probably didn't spend quite as much time studying art as he did science, but he got Susan's somewhat heavy handed reference. "Well if nothing else, such a place would probably be useful for working on my attempts to reverse engineer Wizards antigravity technoligy."

--

The ovaloid door slammed shut behind them and Susan let out another sigh of disbelief. "Oh come on, I like curves as much as the next stretchy girl, but that's just ridiculous." It wasn't a bed. Susan's mind just wouldn't let her call anything that looked like this a bed. It was more like some kind of hammock made out of metal and attached to the ground.

Beds were suppose to be angular, she wasn't picky about weather they were squares or rectangles but they should be one or the other, as opposed to this disjointed thing. "Well we could at least give it a try and see how it feels..." Susan took a moment to slowly run a hand through her hair to make sure no tangles got in the way of the good shake she proceeded to give to illustrate her exasperation.

"You can if you want to. You're good at that kind of thing after all. Life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Life gives you superpowers, become superheros. Life turns you into a disembodied telepathic telikentic brain, design a whole bunch of machines that you can operate by thought alone. Life gives you the body of your college rival, move right in and make it your own in every way possible. Life gives you an elastic girlfriend, have lots of crazy cosenual sex with her. Life knocks up said girlfriend with six kids, sweep her off her feet even if you have to be wearing special armor that would let you at least lift a car, if not a truck, and into a church.

I on the other hand, am currently starting to eel a bit frayed mental and have decided that when life gives you lemons, you should just go looking for oranges or some other more reasonable fruit and don't intend to stop looking till I find them.

In short, I'm only going to let this house stretch my nerves so far, and right now they're just about ready to snap..." Susan walked over the bed and laid down next to it. In short order the lower half of her had transformed itself into a very square bed, from her upper body rose up out of it like a nymph from a river.

"There, don't I look more comfortable than that thing?" Reed said the first thing that came to his mind. "No contest." Susan nodded and patted her body, Reed climbed onto Susan's body blushing slightly in the process. "I trust you'll understand if I feel somewhat taken aback at the prospect though?'

Susan generated a tentacle like extension of her body and wrapped it around her husband to keep him from leaving any time soon. "Why, don't you think I'm soft with just the right amount of spring?" Reed's blush deepened. "You are, you really are, but forgive me for being a bit bashful about the prospect of using my pregnant wife's body as a bed."

She just smirked at him, there were times when it was entirely too much fun to play with Reed's good natured side. "Well what was that line from Shakespeare, 'women are made to bear' if I remember correctly?" Reed nodded slowly. "That's the quote, but in the sense of bearing children." Susan began to wind her body around Reed's. "Yeah, well in retrospect its a quote from Taming of the Shrew which wasn't exactly the most forward thinking of plays.

So Reed. what do you think of the place?" Reed reached out and gently stroked his wife's chin. "Susan, you're the one who wants to purchase a home away from the Baxter Building, so I think your opinion matters considerably more than mine in this situation, what exactly do you think of this place?" Susan looked around the room and sighed, Reed could feel it in both his front and back.

"I was hopping for something a bit more conventional, I mean yeah the press won't have an easy time to getting to us, but I'd still really like to have a home with a couple more right angles. That's not too much to ask for is it?" Reed jus smiled at her. "Considering I tired to give you the moon and ended up giving you superpowers instead, I don't think right angles are too much to ask for at all.

In fact, if we can't find any place you like than I'll just hire some people to build you the kind of house you want, wherever you want it to be. That's one of those oh so subtle perks of being rich, you want a vacation home in the Bahamas realestate agents beat a path to your door to sell you the biggest piece of heaven they can."

Susan released her grip upon Reed and lay back upon herself looking up at the ceiling, which of course curved this way and that rather then being properly (or at least normally) flat was curved. "That might be a bit more of a commute then I care for, and, knowing our luck we'd end up buying some place that has some kind of Ester Island reject just waiting to come to life and mess with us as soon as we arrive.

At least when we buy close to home we're slightly more familiar with the territory and less likely to get taken by surprise." Reed reached out and took her hand. "So how long do you want to stay here?" Susan batted her eyes, slowly. "What do you expect? Lets have some fun now, eat dinner here, probably have some more fun tonight, and then we'll book out of here in the morning. Plan?" Reed leaned forward and kissed her. "Plan."

--

"Having a little trouble there sis?" Susan glared at Johnny from her seat. Unfortunately said seats was just like the rest of the house, curved, and while being pregnant could make sitting in a normal chair a bit difficult, doing it in this particular piece of abstract art was utterly impossible.

Every time she scooted forward, her belly caused her to collapse right back against the edge of the chair. "Only because I'm trying to maintain a sense of dignity. But since you decided o point m difficulties out, I'm going to take a page out of your book and just go ahead and make a fool of myself."

Susan transformed herself into one more bit of abstract art filling the house, elongating her arms and neck until she was able to properly place them on the table. "Please tell me, that Crystal is cooking because between this place, your cooking, and being pregnant I would have a really hard time keeping anything down."

The sight of Crystal walked in, her appearance both elevating and lowering Susan's sprits. "I've got dinner!" Susan looked at her and blinked a couple of times. "You're wearing an apron." Crystal looked down at the apron she was wearing over her yellow outfit and blushed slightly. "Well this thing is only thread and fabric instead of unstable molecules, so it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Susan slowly nodded an extended an elbow well past its natural length and into her husband's side. "Reed you really should get around to making Crystal an unstable molecule outfit or two." Reed of course nodded though Johnny had other ideas. "I think you look cute in that thing Crys, I never realized you had a domestic side."

Ben's wings flapped slightly, he wasn't enjoying the oddly shaped chairs any more than Susan. "Bit of advice JON 9000, the only time in my life I ever saw Susy in an apron was when she was trying to work her way into Reed's heart through his stomach. If you're not careful you might find yourself falling for the same trap that he did."

Johnny took a bite out of the pastry that Crystal had laid before him and smiled. "Hey, if this is being hooked, then reel me in, toss me in the boat, and beat with the paddle!" It was probably of out of relief of seeing her brother be surprisingly mature (and possibly the prospect of Susan being able to pash the duty of looking after him to some other woman) that forced a giggle from Susan's throat.

Reed of course just smiled benignly as he took his own bite. "Speaking of the fairer sex, how are things with you and Alica going?" Ben glowered across the table at him. "How do you think its going?

She came back from that art show where she'd won some awards, sold some statues, made some money, we had a nice night on the town together. We're still working our way through that delicate process of courting one another.

You might remember how that kind of thing can take time, heck I blew and entire year of my life thinking up every conceivable excuse in the book to get you two to spend time together so that you'd realize you were made for one another short of throwing contraceptives a handful of contraceptives at you and telling you to have a good time."

Of course if I'd known then what I do know then I would have, which would have saved us a lot us a lot of trouble." Everyone including Susan laughed a that. Now that she'd spent as much time pregnant and married as she had pregnant and unmarried the unplanned for nature of her conception had become a joke that they all agreed on was funny in the grand scheme of things. So with everyone in good spirits they good down to the meal.

--

Susan rubbed her belly with both hands, and barely stifled belch, unintentionally causing her throat to swell up rather like a bull frogs for a few moments. After carefully exhaling that excess air out through her nose she finally spoke up. "Good meal Crystal." Crystal nodded and blushed.

"I picked up some tips form my sister. It wasn't like there was anything productive we could do while we were trapped in Attilan and it helped us both focus on something other than the negative barrier for a while."

Then all of a sudden it went dark. Susan heard Ben's wings beating and someone's hands thrashing against the table. "Hey, who turned out the lights?" Crystal shot back a response almost at once. "Don't worry about it, I'll just use my powers to create a small fire in the palm of my hand, that should give us enough light to see by... huh?"

"What's the matter?" That second voice was Reed's and she couldn't help but notice a few tones of panic creeping into it, and when Reed Richards panicked other people tended to have already started running around like headless chickens.

Crystal's voice shot back an answer at once. "I lit a flame I can feel it, but I can't see it..." "That's because you are blind my dear." The voice that responded to Crystal this time was male, but it didn't belong to any of the men who had been seated at the table, Susan was sure she had heard it before but she couldn't quite place it.

Not that she didn't have other things to worry about, she cold feel several relatively minuscule hands grabbing parts of her body and pulling her from her chair. Unable to make any sense of what was going on Susan let them, and she soon found herself laying flat on her belly while her hands being pulled beyond heir natural length and tied in a knot.

"How deliciously ironic! When last we met Fantastic Four you might have been able to get the better of me, but now subjected to the powers of my blindness ray, you and soon the entire world will become easy prey for the subterranean armies of the Mole Man!"

Johnny had apparently missed the classes that involved negotiating with supervillians as Susan could hear his now metalized skin clanking slightly as he moved. "Oh come on, you don't seriously expect up to give up just because you've got a slight advantage on your side do you?" Before the sounds of battle could fill Susan's ears, the sound of her husband's voice did. "No, Johnny, he's right."

End Chapter 16


	17. Chapter 17

AN: Bare with me if the latter half of this chpater seems a bit disjointed. It was a lot longer in its first draft and I cut some parts out to make it a quicker and more interesting read.

Swelling With Love Chapter Seventeen, Expectations: In which Susan and Reed Richards save the world.

Things were not looking good for the Fantastic Four. No sooner had that thought crossed Susan's mind then she had to admit to herself that things weren't looking anything for the Fantastic Four at the moment, in fact, she couldn't even see her hands in front of her face. At least she wouldn't have been able to see them if they were there which they weren't.

They were behind her neck, tied up in as pretty a ribbon as you could ask for by the Mole Man's moleoids, she'd dispatched quite a few of them the last time the group had done battle with the Mole Man. They weird looking creatures about three feet tall, hairless, with yellow skin and incredibly large eyes, which ironically served little purpose since they were mostly blind.

"Reed what are you..." Before her brother could go any further into some emotional outburst Reed cut him off. "For once in your life Johnny don't act like a foolish cowboy, the Mole Man has us beat and that's all there is to it."

Of course no sooner were the words out of his lips then a few more came their way through his mind. /More to the point Johnny if you remember the last time we fought the Mole Man he couldn't resist filling us in on every single detail of his plan. We need some time to strategies and playing dead can't make our situation that much worse. So now that we've got that time, here is my plan...

Since I don't have my armor on I'm more or less useless in a fight. But, if I concentrate hard enough, I should be able to allow the four of you to "see" by making use of my ability to track sentient minds and...\ /Time and a place to explain that kind of thing Professor, and this isn't it. Just do it, and then we'll take care of the clobberin.\

/Just be careful, once I do it I probably won't be able to split my concentration enough to talk to you as well, and there's no telling what kind of new tricks the Moleman might of come up with since we last ran into him.\ /Give us some credit Reed, it's not like we've been sitting around on our armored plated asses since then either, and now we've got Crystal on our side!\

Susan thought about coughing as loudly as she could. /So are we going to come up with a plan beyond start swinging away at the bad guys and hope they all fall down?\ /Hey that's usually Reed's job not mine, and frankly I think he's already done his part just by giving us a chance to see, assuming he can, which we won't be able to find out until we stop pestering him Sis.\

There was "silence" in Susan's mind even if here ears were filled with the Mole Man ranting over how he would soon perfect his blinding machine, use it to steal sight from every human on the face of the Earth, and then easily conquer the now defenceless nations of the world.

/I'm not quite sure how many Moleoids there are, but there's probably a few dozen of them, and we're all currently being restrained by them. Crystal because their most powerful sense is touch, and the fact that they can see slightly, if you can use your powers to...\ /Burn them?\ /That's was about the gist of it. Ben, be careful I can discern sentient form non sentient, and even different people, but the walls of this place are so oddly designed that flying would be risky to say the least. So once we're all free, it'll be your job to try and make sure I don't get hurt thus fully blinding the others.\ /You got it, you be the radar station, I'll run interference.\

/Johnny, try not to run straight at the Mole Man, his reflexes are superb to say the least if you haven't forgotten.\ /Okay fine, but once I bust free of these midgets holding me can I at least throw the table at him?\ Reed evidently didn't feel that was worthy of comment, which to Johnny was the same thing as approval. /Susan?\ /I can slip out of the pathetic knot they've got my arms tied in any time I want, you've... seen me get out of worse.\ /No, I just wanted to say "I love you" even though it probably doesn't need reiterating.\

/Christ, why did you have to say that?\ /Excuse me for the theatrics Johnny, but the Mole Man doesn't seem likely to get tired of the sound of his own voice any time soon. Though I suppose I might just be missing something important if I'd been paying more attention to the part where he went on about how exactly this building interferes with the human eye's ability to properly relay information to the brain.\ /Reed, haven't you ever seen any war movies? Showing a picture of the girl you love back home who's waiting for you is like being the black guy in a horror movie, it's the kiss of death.\ Another long mental silence. /Let's just get my plan in motion shall we?\

It happened slowly, all of a sudden lines started running this way and that in Susan's vision, like she was looking at some kind of three dimensional grid. True enough to Reed's words she didn't really see people, instead she saw large boxes. Boxes that were various different colors, a silver one she knew was Johnny, an orange one she knew was Crystal, a purple one she knew was Ben, a blue one she knew was Reed, multiple yellow boxes that she knew were the Moleoids, and one green box that she knew was the Mole Man.

/Sweet not as good as sight of course, but still much better then being blind? So sis can we finally start hitting this?\ /Yes...\ As soon as she'd sent the mental command Susan's legs arched backwards, grabbed the two moleoids that had tied her hands together and hurled them over her body while simultaneously undoing the knot her arms had been put in.

By the time she'd finished that Johnny had broken out from under the pile of six moleoids he'd been buried under and to his credit had the presence of mind to throw one of the things at the pair who were holding onto Ben. Crystal had done something (since she could only see the movement of the blocks it was hard to tell what) that had taken care of the two moleoids who had been watching her, and then apparently dealt with the two who were clinging to Reed as well.

"What is this? Seize the duplicitous traitors!" A wave of yellow blocks raced forward from behind the Mole Man. Susan yawned till her jaw hit the floor, and promptly stretched out her now untied arms looping them around one of the miniature minions after another until she had all of them caught in her rubbery embrace, at which point she hurled them in the Mole Man's general direction.

The green block moved around a bit, but was apparently unhurt. "Bah, you may have defeated my minions by sheer luck, but in your current state I am quite capable of making sure you never leave this house alive!" /I got this one.\

With all of the minions out of the way Johnny began to slowly walk towards the Mole Man. "Dude, last time I checked, you're a guy with a wooden stick, I'm resistant to just about anything shot of bunker busters, there's only going to be one way that this can end."

Unsurpringly the Mole Man wasn't about to be cowed into surrendering. "How right you are, try your best!" The silver and the green blocks overlapped for a few moments, and then suddenly with a strange sizzling sound (and smell) the silver one went flying away. Luckily to judge by his voice Johnny hadn't been that hurt by his unplanned for flight. "Okay, that's new, since when did that stupid stick he carries around be capable of pumping a couple thousand volts through a guy?"

"I upgraded my staff since last we did battle in preparation for the glorious victory that is now at hand!" Susan smelt even more lightening as Crystal let loose with several blasts in the direction of the green block which twisted and weaved, before suddenly making the orange one fall backwards.

"His staff can also shoot energy..." The Mole Man chuckled, and probably nodded as well. "You are correct my dear. In your current state it will be nothing more than child's play to pick you off one at a time!"

Susan heard the sounds of clanking metal as her brother regained his feet. /Dam it, that staff is only discharging ordinary electricity, if I could just see it coming a couple moments in advance I'd just be able to absorb it just fine...\

Ben left Reed side and began to execute a brave diving attack on the Mole Man only to veer off at the last moment (evidently operating on pure instinct) so at least while he kept the Mole Man busy they had some time to think of something.

Ultra Woman rocked back and forth on her pregnant belly for a moment. /Johnny, grab my right shoulder and get ready to absorb electricity, Crystal if you can use your powers to help direct the stuff towards him so he can absorb it grab my left.\ As it turned out Reed still could communicate telepathically, but the words were extremely strained. /Susan, what are, you doing?\

She looked straight ahead in the direction of the green block. /If we just sit still he will take us down with blasts of energy like we're ducks in his own private shooting gallery. I'm going to stretch out and wrap my self around him so thoroughly that I'll force him to jam that stick into me, and leave both him and it tied up in my coils at which point one of you should be able to finish dealing with him.\

She couldn't ever remember Reed's voice sounding as pitiful as it did now. /You can't... even if you can... ride out... the shock... our children...\ Susan took in a very deep breath. /I know, I know. But just like I said, I'll always be a superheroine first, and if we don't stop him here then how many people are going to get hurt stopping him later. I can't dodge what I don't see coming so I'm going to take a blast from that thing sooner or later might as well accomplish something when I do it...\

She felt Johnny's hands close around her right shoulder and Crystal's around her left. /I hate... it... when... you're... smarter... then... me.\ Susan stretched forwards toward the green block.

--

Johnny absorbed as much of the electricity as he could hopefully before it managed to make the journey from his sister's upper body to her womb. When the torrent of energy died out there was darkness, all of a sudden Reed's special telepathic vision seemed to have died out.

He heard the sound of someone walking forward, and then Reed spoke up, except that it didn't sound much like Reed. Normally he was trying to do everything he could to speak with a different inflection than the previous owner of his body had, not any more. "They say you should never hit a man wearing glasses, so I'll be taking these."

There was the sound of metal twisting, and glass shattering, and the Mole Man let out a squeal of terror. No! Without my special dark glasses I can't see above ground!" Johnny could just make out the sound of someone pressing a part of someone's body to the floor.

"Yes I know. Now do you want to disable this building's ability to interfere with our ocular organs, or do you want me to rip the knowledge of how to do it straight from your head? Both options have their advantages, the former would be much more efficient and quicker, but the latter has an undeniable appeal to it that I can't quite place at the moment. I expect an answer inside the next few seconds."

"I'd disable the blinding ray but I can't reach the emergency deactivator!" There was the sound of someone repeatedly bringing their foot down on some portion of someone's anatomy a word coming between each stamp. "Don't, you, know, I'm, a, fucking, genius? Don't, waste, my, time!" The stamps stopped. "Do you honestly think I'm about to let you get your arms free after what you just did to my wife? Tell me where it is and then I'll use my telekinesis to manipulate it."

The Mole Man's voice was a pitiful squeal. "It's in a pocket sewn into the lining of my coat!" There was silence.

--

Reed slowly ran telekenetic fingers all along the Mole Man's cloak, until he felt said pocket and felt the device in it. "Ahh I can feel it, if it's a bomb, or some other weapon of last resort now would make an excellent time to inform me of it before I activate it while it's practically rubbing up against your skin."

"It's real!" Reed contemplated his options. On one hand he could spend about sixty seconds making sure of that by violating the Mole Man's very being in a way that would make simple unwanted physical penetration seem a broken wrist next to having your entire arm chopped off with a rusty chainsaw. It was an idea with all kinds, well one kind of appeal, but he'd have to make sure that Susan and his children were absolutely dead before he allowed himself the pleasure of going stark raving mad and showing the spirit of Victor Von Doom how a real man conquered the world before turning it into a high tech utopia with himself as semi-benevolent dictator.

So he could either step away in case it was some kind of explosive and the Mole Man had realized that death might be preferable to what might be awaiting him, or just push it and get it all over with. For his part Reed also realized that death might be preferable to what was awaiting him, so he pushed it.

He blinked a few times and as finally able to stop leaning on his second sight which was exhausting in the extreme. Susan's upper body was wrapped tightly around the Mole Man's own, and even though he had driven his staff into her she had still fallen on him in such a way so as to leave him utterly pinned, which was why it had been so easy for Reed to plant his feet on the supervillians head.

"Much better, and doubtlessly I can reverse engineer the technoligy present in this house so as to create something that will counter act any attempt you make at a later date to create mass blindness among the people of the world. Of course, that 'if' hangs upon the condition A that you still be alive at a later date, which in turn hangs upon the 'if' of condition B that Susan is also.

Most of life can be reduced to a simple set of logical equations if we try hard enough. If not B then not A. Love of course frequently defies logic, but then so does hate." Reed yanked the Mole Man from Susan's heavy, but unresisting coils, taking the deactivator from the supervillians cloak in the process.

"Of course if Susan survives but not our children, well normally I'd say I'll make sure you spend the rest of your life in a very low ,very dark place but that's where you like to live isn't it?" Reed practically snarled the rhetorical question, and even though he didn't have his armor on he was still managing to shake the captured supervillian like a terrirer shaking a halfdead rat in its jaws.

"So instead I'll make sure you spend the rest of your life in a very high, very bright place. You'll be bombarded by sunlight for a full sixteen hours a day, I'm not sure how at the moment, but they say that work is a great healer and if you managed to scar my soul then, I'll now have just the project to focus on!"

Slowly a pair of blue eyes opened as Susan hesitantly raised her neck (and just her neck) from the floor. "Ouch, I'd ask if anybody got the number of the bus that hit me but I don't think getting hit by a bus would hurt that much. More like I stood in front of a big cargo train and got nailed by it before I got run over by each and ever single car it was pulling with it..."

Susan slowly began to pull herself back to normal while at the same time Reed's grip on the Mole Man's collar loosened slightly as he turned to look at her, his voice an odd mix of hatred and love. "Susan, I'm amazingly glad to see you okay, but until we get back to the Baxter Building none of us will have any way of telling how our children are doing..." Then all of a sudden as his teamates were so used to seeing happen, certain thoughts occurred to Reed Richards that did to no one else.

"I don't believe it, they're thinking!" About five seconds later four voices raised more or less the exact same question. "What?" Reed dropped the Moleman and ran over to Susan pressing his ear up against her even more odd looking (given the way she was currently strewn about the floor like a rug for the most part) belly.

"That's two, at least two... it's like the psychic version of kicking, picking up on something carelessly brushing up against the boundaries of my mind. Three, three! Calling it thinking is over stating it, but it will have to do for now. What matters is that I for the first time, I can pick up a sort of psychic feedback coming from Susan's FOUR! From Susan's womb. I never thought it would manifest this early of course, five...

I didn't expect it to show up until a few, most likely three when the brain finished developing, after they were born. But apparently as so often seems to happen when we're involved nature had other plans. I guess we'll soon enough be living in a scientific fiction novel even more then we already are, finding out what happens in a society where children learn to read minds at the same time they do books..."

The count Reed had been giving was something of a nosequitor, but Susan couldn't help but focus on it, and more importantly how long a pause had come after his last declaration regarding it. "Reed, are you sure about that?" She was more or less back to normal now, even if she was still laying on her large belly that she looked at with apprehension which Susan couldn't help but drum a hand against it, unfortunately looking at her handful of fingers was another reminder of that same number all over again.

Reed nodded slowly. "There's a distinct feel to each of their minds even this young, sort of like being able to examine their individual finger prints which of course differ for every person, even among identical twins. Yes I'm certain five...

After all we've been through we really should consider ourselves lucky, I mean you've pointed out yourself every now and again just how much punishment you've all been through over the last few months..." A faint mist began to build up in Susan's right eye as she mournfully nodded. I know, it's just..." Reed leaned forward, whipped the tear from her eye and whispered a single word into her ear. "Six."

Susan blinked twice then looked at Reed daring to say anything else, he just simply nodded. "SIX!" It was almost unreal that one simple number could so transform the mood of a room. "GROUP HUG!" Susan's limbs shot out like an octopus' one limb wrapping around each of her companions and pulling them into a good-natured embrace.

--

When said embrace finally ended Johnny looked over his shoulder and noticed they were the only ones in the room. "Um guys, I of all people hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think we all got so caught up in thinking about your and my sister's kids to be that we forget to keep an eye on. So hands up everyone in the room who feels like an idiot?"

Johnny had no sooner finished asking the question then he proudly raised his own hand, and the other occupants of the room weren't that far behind. But even as he raised his left hand into the air Reed wrapped his right around Susan's neck. "You're absolutely right, but for some strange reason I can't bring myself to care."

--

After that they got serious again with Reed really going at the walls and basically creating several big piles of all the technoligy he could find to have brought back to Baxter Building by various people who had more time on their hands then he did. Thanks to the vigor with which he approached the task, Susan and Reed were back in their traditional bed which contained the orrigional four right angles.

Susan still dressed in her unstable molecule uniform lay on her side and more or less plunged her head against the pillows, frequently moving about and trying to find just the right spot. "Reed?" "Yes?" Having found a spot that suited her, she closed her eyes. "I feel like I could sleep for about a week after that. When I wake do eventually wake up I want it to be somewhere unpleasant."

Reed was understandably confused. "Meaning?" Susan opened eyes, but only because she needed them to help convey an important message. "Today hit a little too close to home for me, probably for all of us truth be told. Different people deal with that kind of thing in different ways I want to deal with it by being able to momentarily forget that there are supervillians out there who want to kill me and my family.

So in the morning roll me out of here, tie me to something, crush me into something, just come up with some kind of over-the-top way of restraining me, okay?" Reed gently reached out, and placed his index fingers on the ridge about his wife's eyelids. "Okay." As he said the word he pulled downwards in such a manner so as to cause the ridge's skin to stretch over Susan's eyes. A few moments later when he pulled his hand away once again her eyes were closed and her entire body was at rest.

--

When Susan awoke she found herself in an odd situation, she was trapped. Her head was stretched out and wrapped around a metal pole attached to the floor that was about three feet wide. As she tested the various sections of her body she that her each of her arms, legs, and her the middle of her body in general had all been pulled out a considerable length and tied around their own individual poles, leaving her frame contorted into a sloppy six pointed star.

"You can't get free can you?" Reed wasn't bothering with his armor, he was just wearing his normal unstable molecule uniform and white labcoat on top of it. Susan tried to nod but found that she couldn't move her neck enough to do it properly, and eventually settled for boobing her head up and down slightly instead.

Reed smiled back at her as he used his right hand to playfully tussle her hair. "Good. I'm extremely proud of myself for thinking up this one, because of how safe it is. As you can no doubt feel, various parts of your body are tangled up around the poles that I've set up and coated said poles with an adhesive derived from Trapster's paste, so that even you can't slip free from them.

Of course you could still elongate your body in general to create a section of it you could manipulate, which is why I set up six powerful vacuums, one of them pulling on each extension of your body. So if you elongated a certain part of your body, before you could properly manipulate it to try and free yourself, it would get sucked into the vacuum chamber, which are all currently at negative forty degrees.

That's one of my favorite temperatures by the way, main because its an anomaly, negative forty degrees Celsius is exactly the same temperature as negative four degrees Farenheight. Of course that's just side information for your edification, what matters is that any part of your body that gets sucked into said chambers would quickly find itself too cold for you to properly manipulate it.

I'd suggest you take my word for it because while I'm fairly sure you wouldn't suffer any permanent harm from having part of your body severally chilled, why tempt fate?" Susan took another moment to consider the situation, felt the tug (well the six tugs) and promptly gave another quick head bob, Reed really had thought this one through.

"Now then I'm going to disable the vacume suction system pulling on your neck so that we can both make ourselves more comfortable.". He fished out a remote from the labcoat, pressed a button and at least now Susan was only being pulled in five directions. "Now then, come with me if you don't mind..."

Reed grabbed hold of Susan's neck and tugged causing it to lengthen, and now that she wasn't directly looking at him, she could see that being pulled in so many different directions at the same time had left her body looking like a large flat blue sheet for the most part. Reed wrapped Susan's neck around one of his arms so that he could use both hands to go from standing on the floor, to sitting on top of her elongated body, a process that caused it to bounce up and down slightly in response to the weight it had just gotten placed upon it.

Susan for her part was the perfect docile captured female, and raised no object to Reed treating her neck like a coil of rope. "So now that you have me completely at your mercy what are you going to do with me?" Reed slowly began to crawl across Susan's body towards her pregnant belly which rose up from her flat body like a small mountain. There were more or less three parts of her body that weren't flat at the moemnt, and the other two happened to be her breasts.

Susan wasn't one hundred percent sure why he'd decided to crawl rather than walk, but if she had to take a guess it was because given the way the section of her body he was moving across was pulled taught it probably could have passed for a trampoline, an idea that doubtlessly bore "further examination" as he husband would say. Subsequently if Reed put too much pressure down in one place without being ready for the equal and opposite reaction it would create, he might end up getting bounced right off of her, and she was in less than prime position to catch him.

Only once he was comfortably leaning against her belly did he finally respond to her question. "We're going to talk." Susan pouted most magnificently, causing Reed to raise an eyebrow in surprise. "What did you expect me to say I was going to have my way with you, to ravish you until I could be sure beyond all doubt the seeds of our union would bear ripe fruit?"

Susan slipped out of Reed's hands so that she could finally give a very clear, concise, and most of all emphatic nodding of her head. In response Reed just shrugged, smiled, and placed a hand on the largest dome which rising from her otherwise flat flesh. "Too late, I already did."

Susan sighed as she allowed her neck to gracefully weave its way through the air back into Reed's hands. "I was somewhat aware of the fact as well, but I would have appreciated the effort." Reed gingerly began to run his hands along as much of Susan's elongated neck as he could comfortable reach.

"Well then maybe after we're done talking... First I just want to say I'm both very proud of and very angry with you." Now there was a phrase that Susan hadn't heard before. At least Reed's fingers felt good on her neck, heck just having Reed sit on her felt good, apparently having it pulled tight made it extra sensitive, and wasn't that a delightful surprise?

"Well color me curious, and continue, both with the explanation and the neck stroking." Sure enough Reed didn't skimp on either. "The way you acted yesterday, it was probably the best tactic available to us, doesn't change the fact that it still scared me half to death.. We already had this discussion back when it actually happening and the world was quite possibly was in danger, and I agreed then it was the right move...

But all that said, if you ever even consider doing something like that again during the next few weeks I'm going to leave you in here with all six vacumes turned on full blast since its the only way I can currently think of to be sure that you and our children are safe." Susan pouted again, though this time she was trying to look pitiable instead of sensual. "I guess chained to the stove isn't enough to you?"

Reed shrugged. "You find me the chain that you won't slip out of the moment you put your mind to it, and I'll consider using it. Like I said, we could have lost some of our children, we could have lost all of them, it's was more or less pure blind luck that even with Crystal and Johnny's help we all came out alive." Susan sighed and then looped her neck around Reed's shoulders so that she was looking up at her husband as she spoke.

"Well more like luck and skill. But that's what being a superhero seems to come down to, luck and skill. Well those two and of course your favorite thing in the world, preparation." Reed now tugged on the length of Susan's neck he held, so that he could once again wrap his arms around the base of Susan neck and rub her cheek up against his own. "No your my favorite thing in the world. Science is a distance silver and proper preparations comes in a close third, though of course either science, or you and science will have to move down the list once our children are born.

Of course I suppose if I had been a bit more on the ball you wouldn't have needed to have risked yourself like that, but like the saying goes, 'coulda, shoudla, woulda, didn't', and I think there's one important lesson I can take from all this: when walking into weird, or awkward situations I'll make sure to wear my armor and not take it off unless absolutely necessary.

That said, I suppose what I really need is to find a quicker more efficient way to get my armor." Susan twisted in Reed's hands enjoying the back and forth of his hands against her flesh. "I'll leave figuring how up to you of course, since all I can think of is finding some way to be able to effectively have your armor melt into your skin when your not using it.

Of course that was just me tossing out ideas at random, so obviously you don't need to take that particular suggestion to heart. Heck, given the fact that our kids are apparently giving off telepathic 'kicks' its probably safe to say that give them a good decade and they probably won't particularly care about anything I'll have to say concerning science either."

Reed grabbed Susan's neck again and pulled it out even further, started to gently wrap it around her own belly. "Don't say that. I didn't feel I'd fully surpassed my parents when it came to science until I was just about in my twenties. Of course I'll be the first to say that I've got no idea what our children will be like...

You can't simply predict what the IQ of a child will be by taking the average of their parent's scores, reproduction is more complicated than that. They might be geniuses, might just be bright, they might prove to be even smarter than me. Some might be one of the other above, and some might be others. Which sadly brings me to the point that in all honesty, the genes that have into our children is one of the few things in the world that significantly worries me."

Susan slowly wrapped her neck around Reed' shoulders like a bright blue scarf. "Do my ears deceive me? Reed Richards, worried about something to do with science?" Reed shook his head very firmly as he placed both hands on Susan's prodigiously pregnant belly. "Genetics are complicated Susan, there are, well hardly countless, but many different way that our two genetic structures can combine.

Though of course the chief reason that I waste my time worrying over the issue, is that 'our' children aren't truly made of a mix your and my genes. They're made of a mix of your genes, and Victor Von Doom's. Because his body might have wound up possessing not only my mind, but also my powers, but the underlying genetic structure hasn't changed.

So I can't help but think that while I know Victor won't be coming back in here..." He took his right hand off of Susan's belly to press it to his head, for a moment. "I can't know for certain that Victor isn't in some small way coming back in here..." Reed return both hands to resting gently on Susan's belly which was still going up and down slightly with each breath she took. "You don't honestly think that they're going to end up being evil just because the half of their genetic structure came from someone who was?"

Reed shook his head slowly, very slowly. "It's more complicated than that, by and large when genetics are involved things are always more complicated than they appear at first glance. Now first of all, let's properly consider the terms that are involved. Why don't we define 'evil' as an adjective which can be applied to people's actions, but not something that could describe said people themselves.

Thus obviously evil isn't a condition that can't be passed down from parent to child through their genes. However, there are genetic conditions that can leave someone predisposed towards committing evil actions which can be inherited, mental disorders which interfere with peoples ability to feel empathy for example. So here I am, playing the genetic version of Russian Roulette, and when there are six children, six spins of the chambers, those are not the kind of odds that I want for my children..."

Susan twisted her neck all the way down Reed's body so that they were more or less equally restrained. "Then why don't we alter the odds in our favor until we find some that we do like? I mean I'm not a psychologist, but come on, people don't try to take over the world just because their genetics say so.

Let's do what you do best, consider facts, figure out what they mean, and then formulate a plan based upon them. What do we know about Victor Von Doom?" Reed tried to shake his head, but Susan was holding onto his neck too firmly. "Not anywhere near as much as I'd like to.

He was always arrogant, though not exactly without reason. At one time or another I did manage to more or less egg him into revealing a few things about his past: lost his mother at an early age, and lost his father not that much later, grew up as part of a poor gypsy community in Latveria."

Susan's neck became even more tightly secured around her husband's body. "Well speaking as someone who also lost both of their parents, it seemed more like the kind of thing to drive a person to depression than trying to conquer the world, but apparently everyone deal's with grief differently.

Still, if you ask me, let's not ever let that be an issue, I refuse to let any of my children know the pain of losing their mother, and if you ever let them know how the pain of losing their father, then quite frankly I'm going to encourage our children to become evil geniuses just so that they can invent some kind of device making use of eldritch energies to raise the dead, thus giving me a chance to properly slap you silly for having the audacity of allowing yourself to die."

Reed's eyebrow twitched slightly. "You're serious?" Susan nodded enthusiastically. "As, a, heart attack. You die before our kids turn fifty, well thirty-five since I'm feeling generous, and I'll getting our kids to bring you back to life so that I can make you regret dieing. The way I figure it, what with having six kids one of them is bound to be a genius by random chance alone. Of course the entire thirty five year clock gets reset if wake up and find that I've got another batch of buns cooking in my oven."

Reed's eyes with wide with surprise and stayed that way. "Umm... another...?" Susan began to work her way back up towards Reed's face. "Well you're supposed to be Mr. Prepared For All Possibilities, and since I've apparently got a menstrual cycle that could probably only be properly explained through the process of you climbing inside my vagina with a scuba tank a flash light to take a first hand look at it we should consider a possibility. On second thought, forget figuring out how my reproductive organs are working, you should probably do that just for the sake of that all important cause, 'fun' at some point.

If we're not careful we could find ourselves in this, or at least a situation close enough to it again, so we should have a plan ready in case it does happen." Reed seemed to be more or less getting himself back under control but was still a little on edge. "Well, after you give birth we'll start taking precautions when we have sex again, both of us. Six is definitely going to be enough for me at the moment."

Susan nodded vigorously. "Six is enough for me also. By the way, I'm getting a little tired of being spread out like a tarp, would you mind turning off the vacuum and spraying down he metal poles with the um, urr... damn it I'm having a blonde moment mixed with a pregnancy fogged mind thing and all I can think of is 'make sticky things not sticky any more' I trust there's a word out there that I'm currently groping for like a blind person trying to find a penny they accidentally dropped?"

Susan could tell from the look on Reed's face that he knew the word she was trying to think of even before she finished explaining how she couldn't for the life of her think of it. "Solvent." "Yeah, that's the one." Susan untwined herself so that she wasn't restraining Reed, allowing him to be about the business of freeing her from his newest trap.

A couple of minutes later, Susan was seated comfortably on the floor. Her legs were currently extra long, her hands and even her neck also laying on top of her distended midsection. "Wow, I never though we'd end up like this." Reed leaned forward and laying his body against Susan's belly. "In all honesty I'd never believe my life could turn out so perfect either."

Susan elongated her neck even further, and took a look at herself. "Me, perfect? come on even, without the belly I'd currently look like a some kind of weird birdlike alien. And should you really be laying on said belly like that?" Reed adjusted himself so that he was sitting on the floor in more or less the exact same position as his wife minus the prodigiously pregnant belly, and then playfully drummed his fingers along Susan's spherical midsection.

"I think there comes a time in a pregnancy when a man must say considering everything else that his wife as been through, like wrestling with her draconic daughter, duking it out with supervillians, getting pulled apart on a rack, and last getting several thousand volts shot through her, that making her belly bear a hundred or so extra pounds doesn't matter much. Now then, want to have some real fun?" "Never though t you'd ask."

--

Susan was in that special place between her an Reed's imagination again. She'd learned to manipulate this place enough that she could make her body pregnant which she found a useful thing thing to do, since it kept her from first having to get used to walking without a pregnant belly, and then getting used to walking with on all over again. At the moment she was laying on her back in the middle of a small forest with trees on all sides of her but only open air directly above her, both the sunlight and the gentle tickle of the grass on her completely bare skin felt wonderful.

At which point Reed walked by, equally naked and calmly chewing on an apple. Susan raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Seriously?" Reed took another bite out of the apple and then nodded. "Seriously." Susan breathed a very heavy sigh. "You make an absolutely horrible Adam." Reed shrugged. "What can I say besides you make a lovely Eve? I'd offer you a bite, but I'd hate for you to get sick from my germs."

Susan slowly batted her eyelashes. "Yeah, that's what I should be worried about." Reed got down on his knees next to Susan and smiled. "Do you know what's interesting about all this?' Susan couldn't help but chuckle slightly as a squirrel ran past them. "All right, tell me." Reed gently rested a hand on her belly as he spoke. "I haven't spent that much time studying theology, but since my parents were Christian it would have been hard not to develop at least a passing memory of certain parts of it. One of which comes to mind was ironically enough given our current situation.

The Bible says that as punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge God gave woman labor pains. Quite frankly I think that the process of giving birth hurts women for the exact same reason that it hurts men to pass kidney stones, the human body can only be stretched so far naturally, and anything beyond that causes pain. That's true of your body as much as anyone else's, its just that the limits your body can be stretched to are much greater than the conventional ones. In fact upon second thought, just about any complex living organism has the entire 'can only be stretched so far' issue.

But still, I'll take care of eating the apples, you're enjoy the prospect of painlessly bringing our children into the world." Susan out and out giggled. "Sounds like a plan to me."

"Excellent after all, you're not a particularly suited for the roll of Eve are you?" Reed calmly snapped his fingers and then the entire world was grey mist and they both "stood" (in actuality it was more like floating since Susan' didn't feel any part of her body being drawn downwards) naked before one another. Reed sighed. "While it is fun to hop around history and take a moment to consider what it would be like to be some of history's famous couples, at the end of the day..." Reed snapped his fingers, and suddenly they were apparently back in their room looking at themselves. They were both asleep and the other Susan had her extra long arms wrapped around Reed who was resting his head on her belly.

"This is who we are, and whatever we care to call ourselves, Reed Richards and Susan Storm, Mr. Fantastic and Ultra Woman, and even with all of history to pick and choose from, there's no one I'd rather be then who I am. Because you make me the happiest man who has ever drawn breath upon this world."

Susan blushed, and swooned as best as a woman who was eight months along with six children could. "Whether or not you realize it, you have gotten way too good at sweet-talking me." Reed just smiled. "Like most things in life, a certain amount of practice comes in quite useful." Susan smiled as her gaze shifted between Reed and their doubles. "So before we wake up why don't we stop pussy footing around, and we can start, well you're a genius you figure it out, lets just clear ourselves some space."

Susan held out her hand and the copies of them vanished leaving both of them fully dressed in their double's outfits. They'd spent a reasonable amount of time in each others imagination's over the last few months, and while Reed was still the undisputed master Susan was proving herself to be a fairly adept pupil. As for the clothing, well Susan wasn't sure why, but nakedness was only a turn-on for so long and then you started to fantasize about your lover wearing clothes, and of course the cycle repeated itself sooner or later.

"Hope you don't mind getting dressed, I just felt like having a side order of foreplay to go with my supersized mindblowing orgasm." Reed just smiled at her. "I don't mind a bit." Susan's right hand extended, wrapped itself around Reed and then while a few of her fingers opened the way, her others sneaked down the opening they created between his pants and his body. Said ever so delicately began to wrap themselves around what they found there bringing a smile to both of their faces. "That's the one I'm sure of it, I'd recognize the penis that took my virginity anywhere."

Reed Richards was probably the only man in the world who imagined himself to be less-endowed than he was at real life, at least most of the time. "Are you sure a taste test wouldn't be help you be absolutely sure?" He threw in a wink as he said he words and Susan's smile grew even broader. "I doubt it, you what they say, at the end of the day all taste alike, besides, I never put my lips on this one." "Well never too late to make for old mistakes is it?"

Reed's manhood had of course gone firm practically the moment that Susan had started caressing it, but now it grew more or less exponentially slipping out of his pants and begging to coil itself around her arm. It kept going past her elbow until it began to rub itself up against her cheek. "Hey yah boy, you don't know how I've missed you."

For reason that she wasn't quite sure of Susan found that when Reed elongated her memeber she couldn't help but consider it an almost seperate entity, (for reason that were either unexplainable or involved a lot of bad "pussy" jokes it somehow reminded her of a large overly friendly dog) addressing it rather than the man it belonged to. Probably she had a hard time reconciling the raw unbridled sexual desire it represented with the man it belonged to Reed crossed his arms as he looked at her.

"You know Susan, there's an expression about compliments going straight to a man's head." Susan winced at her husband's absolutely atrocious wordplay. "True but I suppose there's another about it's not the size that matters it's how you use it." In this particular case Reed's decided to slowly entwine itself around Susan's belly in a fleshy harness, lifting her up unto the air and pulling her closer. "You know we never did get around to ever trying that pole-dancing idea you had..."

Susan forlornly placed her hands over her bulging belly. "You really expect me to try looking like this?" In response Reed gently deposited her back on the ground while his manhood thinned down slightly transforming itself into a fair approximation of a stripper's pole. "Susan, being pregnant makes you look so beautiful that I'll probably be trying to get you in the family way again for the rest of our marriage after you give birth."

Susan snorted as she looked at the pole in question and then back at her belly. "Family way, certainly seems to be the a good way of putting it considering just how many I'm carrying. All right then, let no one say I'm not willing to try. So here's just a little taste to get you started..."

Sitting down made it easy to remove her blue boots, and getting them off at any other time in the 'act' she was about to put on would probably be rather difficult. Then she stood up and with as jaunty a sway a she could manage without risking falling over, she grabbed hold of he pole Reed had provided her with.

For about a solid minute Susan slowly began to disrobe herself while giving what doubtlessly would have qualified as the worlds oddest pole dance. She'd managed to remove her gloves and the top half of her uniform, but looking down at her long pants Susan decided she'd need to reposition herself slightly before she'd be able to properly remove that particular in an enticing fashion. So making use of her powers in manner she never intended to do in public, she stretched out her breasts, wrapped them around Reed's 'pole' and managed to actually lift her entire pregnant body into the air with just her bosom.

Reed for a moment looked like he was going to let loose with another scientifically precise catcall (Susan hadn't been able to keep herself from smiling at "you make me harder than carbon atoms arranged in a isometric hexcotahedral crystal lattice!") when the absurdity of the situation finally caught up with them and in moments they were both lying on the floor laughing at themselves and each other.

It passed fairly quickly however and Reed soon once again became active, his manhood starting to weave its way back and forth across Susan's belly. She waited for it to make the inevitable trip southward, but apparently her husband was going to his own sweet time. So she playfully began to run her hands down the considerably extended portion of his anatomy as she spoke. "Something on your mind?" Reed nodded as he flexed his "muscles" lifting Susan into the air and manuvering her so that she hung only about a foot away.

He reached out a hand, and pressed his index finger to the nub of Susan's belly button which had in fact popped outwards, as one more thoroughly unneeded sign that she was pregnant. "This. It's probably seemed like forever to you since you're the one who had to carry them, but the last eight months still seem like little more than the blink of an eye. So, what has it felt like to be pregnant?"

Susan would only consider herself to have "felt like" she was pregnant the day after her kids were born. "Well we've been living pretty close together for the entire process months, you've effectively been my gynaecologist, you've read my mind on a couple of occasions, short of getting some pretty life-changing surgery I don't think there's anything more you could do to understand how it feels to be pregnant."

Reed blinked a couple of times and then blushed. "I guess you're right." Hoping to bring her husbands mind back to the other "conversation" they'd been having Susan extended her body from the breasts up an intertwined it around Reed's forcing him onto "the ground" in the process. This left the two wrapped up in one another laying on each other's backs more or less as they watched Reed's manhood began to slowly inspect Susan's belly like a snake carefully examining an egg it intended to be feasting upon soon.

"There, I figure why just be apart of the show when I could also have front row seats?" Reed's eyes widened slightly at her words. "So we'd be voyeristically watching our genitalia interact with one another?" Susan shrugged as she pulled Reed a little closer to her. "Just think of it like a fireworks show, when the really big ones go off every car alarm in the nearby area starts screaming its head off."

Reed opened his mouth allowing a tongue that had to be at least fifteen inches long fall from his mouth. Then displaying the fact that he'd obviously been practicing, he managed to keep talking without difficulty. "If such is my wife's request I'll be glad to grant it." Of course a moment later Susan realized that the extra long tongue hadn't just been for comedic effect as it began to work its way across her body towards the gap between her breasts.

That surprised Susan for a moment and then suddenly his tongue forked, and not like a snakes, it actually became two individual tongues one going left and one going right. "Reed what are you doing?" A tender invisible telekenetic hand lifted up the outskirts of her bra allowing the either tongue to proceed toward the flesh beneath. "Working on setting another historical record. I want to see just how many of my wife's erogenous zones I can pleasure at the same time."

True to his words, Reed began to attend to Susan's body as expert musician would his most cherished instrument. Ironically the only sounds that Susan could remember herself emitting in response were the kind of wordless high pitched half-moans half-shrieks of exuberance that probably would have been capable of shattering glass if there had been any around.

--

Reed and Susan both looked considerably worse for wear as they made their way into the kitchen. Husband and wife shared heavily-lidded eyes, though aside from that the exact nature of their difficulties varied.

Reed seemed to be half trying to support Susan, half clinging to her for dear life. Not to mention an impartial viewer might assume he'd only just learned how to walk, every single step he took involved slowly raising a leg then swinging more or less his entire body forward, before planting it on the floor and dragging the back half of his body forward until his legs were evenly positioned next to each other.

As for Susan, well she was eight months pregnant with six kids, the fact that she was able to achieve any sort of bipedal movement at all no mater how awkward and inefficient was surprising in and of itself. Johnny looked up from the breakfast he and Crystal had been having and winced. "Ouch, what happened to you two last night? You look like you both got run over by a truck and then the driver decided to put the thing in reverse."

The fraction of time between Johnny finish that sentence and starting his next one was so infinitessimally small that even Reed would have had his work cut out for him if he'd desired to measure it. "You know on second thought please don't answer that, there are some thing younger brothers were not meant to know. What matters is that even if you've got facial expression that makes me wonder if you're going to start mumbling about how your want to eat my brains you're here.

Which means I can do this." Any other time Susan would have returned fire with a comment about how if she'd been turned into a brain-eating zombie she certainly would have known better then to look for nutrition inside her brother's cranium. But this time a blend of general listlessness and surprise at what came next kept her mouth shut.

Johnny got out of his chair reached into a pocket of the jacket he was wearing over his unstable molecule uniform, pulled out blue box that fit neatly into the palm of his right hand and got down on one knee before Crystal. "Crys I know we haven't known each other that long, but I think the sooner we get this out in the open the better." With meticulous slowness began to open the box.

"Would you consider joining the Fantastic Four?" Inside the box was not a diamond ring, but a small pin in the shape of a 4. The first sound to fill the silence that filled the room as after Johnny's question was not Crystal's voice. It was the sound of Susan falling forwards and landing on her belly causing it to ripple slightly. Reed wasn't far behind, not so much out shock but because he had been hanging onto Susan, and so her fall resulted him landing on her back a few moments later.

"That kind of thing can't be good for my nieces and nephews..." "Only if she didn't have superpowers..." Susan twisted her head around so that she could maintain eye contact with Reed, and for a moment she would swear that both of them were about to giggle, probably in a combination of the absurdity of the situation and relief that Johnny wasn't proposing to anyone just yet.

"It's beautiful Johnny, but since Reed's in charge of the team shouldn't he be the one who's responsible for this kind of thing?" Johnny looked at the pile of limbs that was Reed and Susan Richards for a moment before returning his gaze to Crystal. "Well Reed's got a lot on his mind right now, what with my sister being pregnant, so I decided to step up to the plate.

I mean from what happened recently both on Tevo Island and against the Mole Man clearly you're pretty darn useful to have on our side on a fight, and it's gonna be kind of awkward to just be dragging you along with us everywhere you go, like she's just our pet sidekick or something, so as I see it you might as well become an official team member. If you want to at least."

Crystal took the pin from the box and carefully attached it to her outfit between her breasts the exact same place the four was on the teams unstable molecule outfits. "Sure I'd love to. In fact I've already thought up a good superheroine name for myself, the Exquisite Elemental."

The three humans in the room winced, leaving Crystal thoroughly befuddled. "What?" Susan shot Johnny a glance that let him know her sister was currently running on only 50 brain power, and he could explain to his girlfriend what was wrong with her choice in name.

"Crys, while alliteration and descriptiveness are good and trust me I think 'exquisite' describes you in all kinds of ways, you also have to be aware of the fact that what you just uttered is a seven sayable tongue twister that looks more natural on a scrabble board then a newspaper headline.

Don't worry about it, though it was good first try and you'll have plenty of time to think up something better." Something in her brother's words resonated powerfully with Susan and she once again contorted her body to look at Reed. "Plenty of time..." He nodded slowly and managed to raise his right hand with which to stroke her cheek. "Something better..." "Come on Crys lets go find Ben and tell him the good news these two look like they might be busy for a while and all sudden I'm not so hungry any more."


	18. Chapter 18

Swelling With Love Chapter Eighteen: Delivery: in which Susan Richards gives birth.

Susan Richards the once mighty superheroine known as Ultra Woman hung her head in defeat. "I just can't do it." A moment after she said the words however she felt something that warmed her, not a sense of hope, but a sense that losing might not be so bad after all. "Well then, if you don't feel like getting out of bed then I suppose I don't either."

Susan stretched out a hand, grabbed some blankets and pulled them so that they covered everything below her chin. As she sighed she felt her entire body (especially her belly) heaving. "Thanks." Just when she'd thought she couldn't get any bigger the last few weeks had done a real number on her figure. She couldn't help but feel that she looked almost like an absurd caricature of herself with a belly so massive that without her powers, she never could have hoped to reach her own belly button which was currently jutting outwards, a miniature mountain on top of a much larger one.

Susan's naked body pulsed with delight as she felt Reed's equally nude one (complete with erect member) rubbing up against her frame. "No thanks necessary, I'm your husband after all." Susan smiled in spite of her somewhat dour mood, just hearing Reed say those words still had a magic all their own to her. "Yep. And I'm your own little science lab. The six samples of our combined DNA you wanted are just about ready; it'll probably only take another week or two till you can study them to your heart's content."

Beneath the covers Susan felt Reed's arms attempt the impossible task of fully encircling her body when they hadn't a chance of even going all the way around her belly. "You know, that not how I see you or the children." Susan smiled wistfully at Reed. "I know, it just helps to remind myself out loud every now and again. It's hard for me to not feel that way given how you've been piling praise on me over the last few months and I've never seen you that invested in anything except one of your science projects."

Reed adjusted his body almost needing to lie flat on the upper slope of her belly in order to be able to properly kiss her. "I've never been as interested in any science experiment as I am in you and our children. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you." "Really?" Another kiss. "Really.

After all, while lionesses are fierce creatures, they lead very hectic lives. They need to hunt prey to feed the pride, and also protect and nurture their cubs, the latter of which breaks down into a great many different tasks, especially when the lioness has to look after multiple cubs at the same time, which is just about always how it happens. The male lion on the other hand has one, well only two tasks, the first is sowing his seed so that there will be cubs in the first place, which is very much a seasonal work. The second is the one that he focuses on the rest of the time, looking after his lioness."

Susan just lay there for a moment before speaking. "Then could you help me get dressed? I may want to stay bedridden, but I just can't seem to stomach the idea of just laying here naked all day." Reed slid away from her towards the other side of the bed. "I'd be glad to." Even though he was doing just what she asked, a part of Susan immediately missed the comforting warmth that came with having him lie right next to her.

Reed took only a few moments to find the appropriate garments and then pulled back the covers so he could get to work. Without the cover's in the way Susan could get a pretty decent view of the upper half of her body. Her breasts were of course swollen with milk and drooped down towards her even more swollen belly which prevented her from seeing anything below it.

She could see more of course if she stretched out her body, but below her belly the view wasn't all that different than she remembered it being, so she rarely considered it worth the effort. She felt another tingle of a excitement run through her body as Reed gingerly slipped the front half of her bra over her head, then eased it on over her breasts which the unstable molecules instantly adjusted themselves to fully and comfortably cover. Then of course came the panties which Reed managed to return to their proper place with a surprisingly sterile touch.

Then it was simply a matter of pulling the top part of her outfit down, and her pants up. Reed then walked over to his side of the bed dressed himself before Susan without the slightest hint of shame (granted what exactly did he have to be ashamed of) and crawled back onto the bed with her. Susan looked down at her body once again this time seeing just how much her unstable molecule outfit had to stretch to cover her.

Granted she'd seen it become even large when she was using her powers, but having it be like this "naturally" was another sensation entirely. "Some superheroine I am right about now. Womb Woman, able to carry and give birth to an entire litter of children at the same time!" Reed just smiled at first, then began to rub his body against hers, and even though they were now clothed it did little to detract from the joy of the sensation. "Susan Richards you'll always will be Ultra Woman, able to look after herself, her teamates, her children to be, and the entire city at the same time. Not to mention look absolutely beautiful."

Susan huffed slightly. "I look like a complete and total mess from the neck up, and giant sphere from the neck down." Reed shook his head repeatedly. "Susan considering the importance of objectivity when it comes to gathering correct data, whose views on how beautiful or ugly you are should hold more weight, your's or mine?" The answer was obvious. "Yours." Of course what was left unsaid was that an actual unbiased observer who wasn't in love with her would be best of all for determining if she was beautiful..

"That's right. And if a husband tells his wife she's beautiful then she should know better than to argue the point." His mock overberence quickly gave way to genuine concern. "So do you really feel like a ball?" As he spoke his hands began to slowly work their way along Susan's massive midsection eliciting a sigh of release from her. "Nah, not really. I just feel sort of tired like I did back at the start, though that may just be eight months of pregnant superheroics finally catching up to me.

My belly feels really big and heavy and sort of full, I don't feel like I'm about to snap in half if that's what you're wondering." As she spoke Reed pulled himself a little closer and began to run one of his hands through her hair. "You don't really think you look ugly do you?" Susan blushed slightly and chuckled. "No, just pregnant, very very pregnant."

As he talked Reed began to rub his legs up and down against her belly creating a surprisingly enjoyable sensation. "Pregnant is a good look on you Susan, if nothing else you've doubtlessly got childbearing hips." Then, as if he was climbing a mountain, Reed began to work his way down Susan's body by using various parts of its as handholds until he could plant a kiss on the fabric covering her belly button.

"In fact, to tell you the truth I think I'm rather going to miss this after you give birth. One of my biggest problems with romancing you was being able to successfully pin you down, but now I have you exactly where I want you; in bed, and unable to get out of it. The fact that you're barefoot and pregnant is just a delightful side bonus." Susan hadn't notice up until that point that Reed hadn't helped her get her boots on (it wasn't as if she could see them) but a little quick probing with her toes and she concluded that indeed they were covered only by blankets.

Susan reached out with her own hands to stroke her belly, unable to naturally reach her husband with it so directly between them. "You know I bet this was all part of some elaborate plan of yours. Getting yourself turned into a bodiless brain for six months so that I'd be a powderkeg of passion ready to blow. You probably also slipped me some kind of drug to keep me from menstruating for those six months then right before you made your move gave me some fertility-enhancing ones so that I'd get knocked so far up that I wouldn't be able to see past my belly again for months."

Reed slowly turned around and climbed a little further down her body, taking a moment to teasingly stroke her bare feet, his voice still caring to her ears just fine. "Little good that observation does you now Ultra Woman. It's too late, my special parasites have been feeding off you for so long that you've got no more strength left then a limp noodle!"

It had taken Susan a while to get used to the strange sensation of seeing Reed's old face but hearing Victor Von Doom's voice, but she had to admit it certainly did let him do a very good diabolical mad scientist when he wanted to. For her part, Susan mimed a weak attempt at making use of an ability which still worked perfectly well before letting out a wail of distress, it was ironic how her helpless damsel voice was getting better even as she found less and less actual need for it.

"Oh no, you're right! How could I have failed to notice? My once firm breasts have become droopily overflowing monstrosities. My once well cared for waistline is now the size of a small nation's coastline! And my powers are gone as well, I'm nothing more then an ordinary woman now, no less then even that! What are you going to do with me?"

Reed's playful cackle bounded of the walls as she felt his hands (having slipped under her outfit) working the underside of her belly. "Quite easily my dear, you will become the first prized cow in my stable. Soon you will give birth a whole host of my parasites which will soon reduce every superheroine in the world to your currently deplorable state. Then while your still disoriented by the birthing process you'll be injected with another even large brood of my parasites."

Susan gasped. "Even larger?" She felt Reed's hands starting to work their way down her belly towards her vagina which she could feel starting to moisten itself in preparation for their arrival. "Yes, you see your elastic womb makes you a perfect incubator, you'll keep giving birth to more and more of my creations until eventually you become so swollen that you'll take up an entire room all by yourself So of course the only question is how do I properly display you till then?

Should I have you laying on your bloated belly like the cow you are, or should I hang you from the ceiling and watch how your elastic body is forced to droop under it's own weight? Ahh but why wonder about such petty questions when there are more important matters to resolve?" That was a stance on life that Susan couldn't help but agree with.

--

And so for the tail-end of her pregnancy Susan connected to allow herself to be pampered and taken care of more or less just like a normal pregnant woman even if she still used her powers for personal convenience and pleasure.

--

Then one day Susan woke up and discovered she was looking up at the ceiling, but it was closer than it used to be. She twisted her head about slightly and noticed that the walls were very close as well.

It didn't take her long to realize that her head was inside some kind of box. She quickly took a moment to figure out the condition of the rest of her body. Still pregnant, still elastic, and on the whole still quite capable of using her powers. If this was part of some kind of evil villains plan then they must have graduated last in their class at evil medical school, or possibly even never gotten accredited.

So either she was dealing with an incredibly incompetent supervillian in which case she didn't have much to worry about, or... "Reed, why did you smush my head into a box?" Sure enough the hole through which her head had been pressed into the box was large enough to let words travel out and back into it with ease. "Because it seemed more appropriate than having a bunch of people jump out from behind couches and tables. Feel free to pull your head out whenever you want to."

So Susan did just that, and was instantly greeted by one word from many different throats. "SURPRISE!" She was laying on a fairly comfortable table that had a slight upwards incline it was also at this point that she was able to place what exactly the odd sensation that had been going through the lower half of her body at this point. It was caused by the fact that from her neck down to a bit past her (popped out of course) belly button she was wearing an unstable molecule uniform, and below that she was only wearing a white sheet and no underwear beneath it.

Susan looked down at this particular arrangement for a moment and then out at the assembled crowd. "If you're trying to surprise me with the fact that I'm going to be a mother soon then I hate to disappoint you, but my body has been sending me signals about it for a while now." Reed was currently leaning against the top of the table by his wife's head, wearing a full unstable molecule uniform and a white labcoat on over it.

"Well there's not much point to ever throwing a surprise birthday party either given that the person who is supposed to be surprised must know they're getting a party thrown for them on that particular day, but still do it. So a very merry birthING day to you Susan nine months ago..."

Johnny produced a sound halfway between a the growl of a half-strangled cat and the squawk of a very startled bird causing Reed to pause for a moment before finishing the sentence. "I acquired Victor Von Doom's body in a manner that could only be called poetic justice."

Susan looked around at the assembled crowd. Aside from the other members of the her team (there was still a certain amount of dithering over the idea of changing its name to the Fantastic Five, aside from the paperwork involved there was also the issue of what to do with their suddenly outdated unstable molecule uniforms which were still perfectly useable and probably cost around ten thousand dollars each) there was also Alicia who was standing arm and arm with Ben, and the respective King and Queen of Attilan.

"Crystal said pregnancies are fairly rare among the Inhumans, but I didn't suspect that the prospect of watching a woman give birth was considered a spectacle fit for royalty to behold." Black Bolt unsurprisingly said nothing, though Medusa chuckled slightly and extended a few hairs that wrapped themselves playfully against Susan's belly. "It isn't. But from what my sister tells me the royal family might only be a year or two away from having a new branch grafted onto it, and it would be shame for us to have missed the birth of those who will retroactively become our nieces and nephews."

Susan's neck slowly shifted between looking at Medusa to look at Johnny and Crystal. "Well I suppose that's the third strike against any chance my kids had of being normal considering they're going to be skeletonless amoebas because of their mother, mind-reading geniuses because of their father, and now royalty because of their aunt-in-law.

At least I'll get to give plenty of speeches about how in my day if I wanted to pick something up I had to actually had to walk over to it instead of just stretching out an arm or calling it over to me with my telekinesis. By the way Medusa, since Lockjaw is probably going to always be 'in the neighborhood' more or less, and if our kids really are going to be some distant relations of yours, do you think that, if something dangerous was going on around here..."

Medusa picked up on what Susan was slowly and painfully working her way towards before the question could even be asked. "It would be a very simple matter to make sure that all of Attilan would stand ready to defend them." Susan breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Thanks. Not that I don't trust my husband to turn this place into a veritable Alcatraz, but I'd still rather put my trust in people than machines, so having an entire city of superpowered humans on the opposite side of the world to protect my kids if the need arises, real load of my shoulders."

"To bad it's not a load off your pelvis since it seems to have so much more to pressing down on it at the moment..." Medusa emphasized her statment by drumming a few more hairs against Susan's belly, to irritation of that belly's owner. "Could you stop that?" Medusa smirked at her. "Wanna go another round over it blondie?"

Susan mimed rolling up her sleeves without actually adjusting her garments. "Before or after I go into labor, red?" Medusa's green eyes locked with Susan's blue ones and the emerald pair blinked first leading to Medusa raising her hands (and echoing the gesture with about half of her hair) to show that she was backing away from the argument.

"I learned my lesson the first time we went at it without me having the advantage of a can of knockout gas on my side, no reason to go repeating old mistakes. Last thing I need is for people to start hearing the story of how you knocked me unconscious and then woke me back up by having your water break on my face."

Susan returned her gaze to Reed having taken he measure of everyone in the room. "Speaking of my water breaking, what makes you so sure that it'll happen today? I mean my superpowers have already interfered with enough rules that have to do with pregnancy and the arrival date is really a rule of thumb kind of thing isn't it?"

In response Reed reached into a pocket of his labcoat and pulled out a remote. "If I only let events progress naturally then yes, but if I need to I've got all the tools and training necessary to induce labor. That said, now that you're awake I might as well let our last guest in. It wasn't easy lining this up only five months in advance, but I suppose if I only accomplished the easy tasks in life I wouldn't be much of a husband or superhero."

He pressed a button on the remote. A moment later the largest orange glowing portal that Susan had ever seen Lockjaw create (at least she assumed that dog was responsible since apart from the size it looked just like all the other ones he'd made) opened up in the middle of the lab and a very confused looking Gale stepped through it.

Susan was not so in love with her dignity (or in possession of sufficient self control) to resist letting out girlish squeal of delight at as her arms instantly shot out and wrapped them around her draconic daughter's large neck. Gale for her part let out a quick shriek of surprise (probably at having gone from wherever she had been to here so fast) but after taking a moment to calm down and realizing she recognised most of the people in the room (if not the room itself) she gave a quick trill of delight. "Hey girl, did you miss me?"

For an answer Gale stomped on over to Susan leaned down and licked her face. Susan unwound her arms and still feeling light-headed from this particular surprise, giggled. "I'll take that as a yes!" Having paid her respects Gale turned her eyes on the less familiar occupants of the room. She gave Alicia a long sniff and then a quick fluttering of the wings that passed for a shrug.

The two had met previously at Susan's wedding, but it was the most time they'd spent in each other's company since just about everybody had agreed that between Gale's tendency to forget her own strength and Alica's blindness, leaving the two alone together was a recipe for disaster.

That done, Gale's head swung towards Blackbolt and Medusa, who she had never seen before. Susan elongated her neck to a considerable degree so that she could watch Gale's eyes as she evaluated the two. For about thirty seconds she just watched Medusa's hair dance back and forth before finally giving the two a quick chuff of approval.

Susan giggled again as Blackbolt visibly relaxed after clearly preparing himself for the possibility that he might need to defend his wife. "Gale likes girls with long hair since they remind her of me and its probably a pretty safe bet that you've got the longest hair she's ever seen." As Susan retracted her neck, Gale began to do something with her hands. Susan tried to discern some meaning from it but no matter how she searched her memories she couldn't remember a similar occurrence.

"If you're trying to suggest that we play a game of catch then not only am I little busy with other things at the moment but I'm not exactly dressed for the occasion." Now apparently it was Reed's turn to chuckle. "It's sign language, or at least close enough to it, given that sign language was invented to be 'spoken' by people with one more finger on each hand than she has."

Susan put a prompt twist in her neck so that she could glare at her husband. "Seeing as you never leave anything half-explained, I bet I'm gonna love hearing how she picked up something like that in the span of five months." Reed smiled. "Well I can't personally claim all the credit, since Gale obviously contributed, but it was my idea.

Her vocal chords aren't capable of producing any human language, but you said she was capable of reasonably articulate thought, so I suggested to Nicholas that he might want to have some people try to teach her sign language. Luckily we started teaching it to her soon enough, if we'd waited too long the section of her mind responsible for language might have been effectively consumed by some other part of her mind, say to boost her hand to eye coordination."

Susan blinked a couple of times. "Can I have that again with a metaphor on the side so that it doesn't bounce right off of my rubbery brain?" Reed luckily was never at a loss of how to explain something slightly more simply, probably because his teammates so frequently asked for one.

"Okay then, to start with if anyone has ever told you that humans only use ten percent of their brain then they're out of their minds. The human brain requires too much blood and oxygen to run for us not to make use of every single bit of it, and if for some reason we can't make use of some part of it for its usual purpose, we'll use it for another.

For example, the cochlear implant is a special device which is designed to effectively be a super-powerful hearing aid. However, different people react differently to them, if a deaf child is given one then they're usually able to make a more or less complete recovery when it comes to both hearing and speech. It's also can usually help someone fully recover if they lost their hearing in some kind of accident.

However if given to an adult who was born deaf, they might be able to hear again, but it's extremely unlikely they'll ever be able to talk. Actual scans of their brains show that while they're signing the part of their brain that lights up is the same one that does in normal people while talking. Like I said, I'm glad to see the parts of Gale's brain relating to language were still available for their intended cause. I didn't tell you about it before today in case it didn't work because it'd be a shame to get your hopes up only to have them come crashing down."

It was still a lot to take in but Susan got the gist of it. "Okay, and knowing my husband the way I do, would I be correct in assuming that you hit the books to get know how to speak sign language in case it did work?" Reed nodded straight away. "Care for me to start translating?" Susan nodded and Reed made a few quick hand motions to Gale. "I just told her that she'll need to start over again..." Gale's head quickly went up and down an as her hands moved, Reed spoke.

This promptly created one of the many odd moments in Susan's life. When Susan had heard Gale's voice in her head about five months ago, she'd had a voice that was comparable to that of a girl who was somewhere between four and eight years old. So all of a sudden hearing the words Gale "said" delivered to her through Reed's voice was about as unexpected as hearing a young boy speaking with a voice in that was of a lower register than most full grown men.

Still, it let the two communicate (even if the process tended to bottleneck slightly since Gale didn't need Susan's English to be translated for her, unlike the other way around), so there had to be something to be said for it. "You're right you did get bigger since last time..." Susan nodded remembering how "small" she'd been on the day of her wedding. "Yeah, now I'd probably be a bite and a half instead of only three quarters of one."

A couple of grey scales acquired a pinkish tint at this point, which was probably the closest that Gale would ever come to blushing. "You know I'd never eat you Mommy, for one thing you only look all rich and juicy, in reality your stringy as rubber." Hearing Gale parrot back a few of the first few things that Susan had told her brought a wide smile to her face. "Nice to know you pay attention. So how is life on The Farm?"

Gale let out a slight chirp even as she signed. "It's good, they let me choose whether I'd rather hunt or just have a meal brought straight to me for once. But the best part is I've met a guy!" Susan slowly looked at Gale and then held up her right hand hesitantly. "When you say 'a guy' do you mean like your daddy or like..."

Rather than trying to articulate her point, Susan took a page form Gale's book and let her hand do the talking. In this case that particular process involved holding her middle and ring finger together while she held her thumb beneath them, throwing in a few extra bumps to them so that they resembled a pair of jaws.

Then her pinkie and index finger spread out using her powers slightly so that they could stick out perfectly to the sides of her hand. Promptly she began to use her powers a bit obviously to make a couple of ridges in those two fingers, making them look at least somewhat like wings, which she began to flap up and down. It was only at this point that she realized yet another use for her powers that would have nothing to do fighting crime, entertaining her kids with shadowpuppets.

It'd been a while since she'd last played charades, but Gale got the point. "He's like me. Well not just like me, but close enough, wings, tail, more or less the same size. Of course he's sorta older than I am, but he's really smart..." This caused Susan's smile to grow even wider as she turned her vision from the person she was having a conversation with to the one translating it. "I guess you could say we Richards women have a type..."

Gale probably didn't get the joke but Reed flashed her a small smile as he continued to translate. "He's oriental, and got a lovely set of green scales. though he does tend to refer to himself in the third person a lot..." Susan whipped an imaginary bead of sweat from her head. "Well having heard that I think we can discount the possibility that you've got a, Reed is their a female version of the Oedipus complex where you want to kill your mother and sleep with your father?" "Yes, it's called an Elektra Complex."

Susan smiled and nodded slowly there where times when it was advantage to being married to a man how is practically a living dictionary, encyclopedia, and thesaurus all rolled into one. "Right then, glad to see you don't have an Elektra complex."

Gale bobbed her head up and down giving something about as close to a nod as she could. "I don't have eggs yet either, not that we aren't trying..." Susan just sighed and placed a very long arm on Gale's snout. "That's one particular blessing I can do without. I'm not even thirty years old and yet you're already trying to make me a grandmother, whoever said having kids ages you horrible was right!" Everyone (except Blackbolt of course) had a laugh at that.

--

And so the day passed in good company. Susan and Gale talked with Reed translating, Johnny and Medusa talked with the somewhat strained cordiality appropriate for their situation, and Crystal and Medusa talked, comparing notes on their time spent with the Fantastic Four, to name just a few of the conversations that took place.

In short, just about everyone who could talk without doing considerable amount of property damage talked while they hung around Susan waiting for the event itself to happen. And then all of a sudden it did.

She felt something inside her body shift, let out a cry of surprise, felt her body stretch itself to accommodate its new situation and then heard a sound which was utterly unpronounceable. There was silence for close to ten full seconds until her brother spoke up. "So that's the 'blessed miracle of life' huh, I think I'm going to go find some place where I can sanitarily loose my lunch."

--

Reed didn't have a stopwatch on hand but it doubtlessly was the shortest time between a woman's water breaking and her children being born, considering that the two had been more or less one and the same. Just like he'd predicted (and Susan had hoped) her body had neatly made room in all the right places so that kids more or less just fell right out of her.

Also luckily snipping the umbilical cords hadn't required any special high-tech tools. So in short, her children were born, cleaned up, fed (Reed of course had some formula on hand since the ratio of breasts to hungry mouths was rather ruinously in favor of her children) and otherwise taken care of.

--

"So what do you think we should name them?" Susan and Reed were in their room laying down on their bed. Reed was looking up at the ceiling and Susan was looking down at her body still marvelling at how greatly her figure had changed now that she was no longer be lugging around six children who had gotten to probably gotten to be more or less the size of soccer balls before they were born.

What to call their children was a question that they'd kicked around a few times before, but always come to the same decision; due to the hectic nature of the their lives, the possible complications that could come with multiple child pregnancies, let alone the fact that both their parents had superpowers, actively naming them before they were born would only make the pain that would come if one them was lost that much worse.

So they'd agreed to wait until the kids were born and healthy before they picked out names for them, and a few quick tests less than an hour ago had shown Susan's children to be among the healthiest sextuplets ever born, probably because they hadn't arrived prematurely. Reed slowly moved his eyes from the ceiling to his wife. "Two boys and four girls."

Susan nodded and Reed slowly held up all the fingers of his right hand, the index and middle of his left. Then slowly he lowered the middle finger of his left hand. "We should name one of the boys Benjamin given how much Ben has done to help us wind up together." Susan echoed the gesturer that Reed had preformed, raising six fingers and then lowering her left middle finger. "Yeah, not to mention he helped save our bacon from more than a few supervillians."

She looked at her left hand and then slowly lowered her index finger. "As for the other, Franklin." "After your father?" Reed asked the question as gently as he could, and Susan did nothing but nod. After being together for so long each of them knew what topics were not to be examined too closely. Once the necessary period of time had passed for silent remembrance Reed spoke up again. "Which just leaves the girls."

Another long silence, but this one was contemplative rather then forced. It ended when Susan slowly lowered her pinkie. "We might as well name one of them Jane so that my brother doesn't go one and on about how I went and gave birth to a litter of kids and decided to name one after Ben but not one after him." Reed lowered his left pinkie as well, the two were now halfway done.

Of course that first half had probably been the easy half. The two just lay there for a few minutes, enjoying the company. Ironically Susan felt her mind drifting away from the task of naming their children and towards finding something humerous about finally being faced with a mental task where she was evidently more or less the equal of her husband.

Of course while she was thinking about that she couldn't be thinking about names which was why Reed broke the silence this time. "Would you think it horribly trite of me if I suggested we could name one of the girls Samantha?" It was trite in its way but it was suitable a now that this particular can of worms had been opened it didn't take Susan long to come up with her own suggestion along similar lines.

"I don't have a problem with it, trite would have been naming one of them 'Susana' so working from that one name why don't we call another of our daughters Rachel." Reed didn't object to that which just left an long silence hanging in the air between them as they tired to think of one last name.

"Valeria." For the first time since they'd started this discussion Susan looked directly into her husband's eyes. "Why Valeria?" As par for the course Reed had an explanation at once. "When I was in college, I learned a few things about Victor that I'm fairly certain he never told anyone else, simply because he considered me as close to an equal as his ego would ever allow him to admit to having.

One of those things was that back in order to come here to learn he had to leave behind the tribe of gypsies he considered his family, including a girl named Valeria who, he talked about like he was... I hesitate to use the phrase 'in love' but it's the most adapt description I can come up with. If there was a woman out there who was actually able to make Victor Von Doom feel any sort of emotional attachment, I think it's name that disserves to live on."

Susan curled her right hand into a fist. "Valeria it is. Well now we've got names for the whole lot of them. So should we wait a few days and see what color their hair starts to come in as, then we name them?" Reed saw the wisdom in this (since it'd make more sense to have a blond named Samantha and a dark-haired child named Rachel than the other way around) at which point he two finally just were able to just lay there and relax.

"Well congratulations, you did it." Susan looked up at the ceiling allowing a small smirk to grow on her face. "Me? I didn't do a damn thing. Together though we managed to do quite a lot." "Are you talking about you and me, or are you talking about the Fantastic Four?" "You're so smart Reed Richards, why don't you figure it out?"

--

Susan Richards mother of six looked at herself in the mirror. "I don't believe it." She reached down and stroked her own all but perfectly flat midsection, yes there was give there, but only the give of her elastic skin. She spun a slow 360 degrees using her powers to keep her head looking directly into the mirror so that she could be absolutely sure of what she was seeing. When she finished that she just stood here and uttered five simple words. "I don't fucking believe it."

She just stood there in silence gazing into her reflection in the mirror until she wasn't the only one in it. "Something the matter Susan?" She turned around to face Reed gesturing almost frantically with her hands. "Look at me! How can I look like this?" "Define 'this' for me if you don't mind."

Susan once again wildly gestured towards her own body. "No woman who just gave birth can look the way I do! The only constant exercise I've gotten for the last month or so has been sex, and for some reason I've got a well-toned midsection, an ass that doesn't have one ounce of droop in it, and pretty well-toned abbs. Hell I just stepped on a scale a few minutes ago, and as far as I can figure the only weight I've put on has been these..." As she spoke Susan grasped her breasts which of course jiggled slightly given their contents.

"So you're complaining that you look too attractive?" There was a heavy silence that hung in the air and then Susan's face just seemed to be pulled in every direction for a moment, then snapped back to normal. "I know, I know, this is not exactly a serious issue, but right now I feel like I won't be able to sleep until I figure out what is going on here. I didn't exactly think I'd turn into a fat slob but I expected to be at least a little chubby, but no, I'm practically oozing sexuality, I look just like I did before I had kids except with bigger breasts! Yes I always planned on being a MLIF, but I figured that first I'd need to diet for and exercise for a year, not go straight from this to that."

"I didn't tell you?" Susan at once stretched her head over so that there were only a few inches between their faces. "Tell me what?" For an answer Reed reached out, grabbed her nose, pulled it, let go causing it to distort and then go back to normal. "That had better be part of some brilliant metaphorical answer, because despite how much I do enjoy the sex, I have the necessary self-control to make sure you don't get to lay a finger on my absurdly, better say ridiculously, in fact lets just say flat out near implausibly hot body, at least for around forty five to sixty days... Reed smiled back at her. "It is Susan, don't worry.

As I was about to say, when I exert pressure on your body it molds itself around the pressure, when I release the pressure it returns to what it considers normal. Now the milk in your breasts, or the liquid in your womb while you were pregnant, those two things represented a foreign substance applying pressure to your body, and your body adjusted itself in response. However, fat cells represents your body putting pressure upon itself, and your body has proven itself quite resistant to deviations from what it considers 'the norm' like how you don't get tired supporting your own body when you stand up.

So without you even telling it to, your body is automatically compacting any additional fat cells it produces into such tightly packed bundles that they become next to invisible. Of course doing that requires energy, and I'll give you three guesses where your body is drawing that energy from..." "The fat cells themselves?" Got it in one."

Susan returned her neck to its normal length. "So you're saying I can't actually get fat because no matter how many calories I shove down my throat, my own body burns them up making me look thin, right?" Reed nodded again and Susan couldn't help it, she stretched out her arms giving herself a tight hug. "Reed, there are three things in this world that I really love, and I'm not going to spare myself the mental strain of trying to figure out exactly what order I love them in, so I'll just list them in the order they came into my life: you, this body, and our kids. Tell you what, why don't I combine all three?"

In seconds she had wrapped her midsection around Reed's body. "Let's go check out our kids and if they don't need us then let's go have kinky, bouncy, physics-defying sex, cause now that I feel that I've dropped about two hundred pounds I'm ready to start really having fun in the bedroom again or whatever room we're in at the time!"

Reed of course managed to keep his calm surprisingly well, but then practice made perfect. "Susan, not that I don't enjoy the prospect of those children you just gave birth to, but a man can only take so many ups and downs in his life, so in the future when we have sex, let's use birth control." Susan uncoiled herself from around Reed returning to her normal appearance. "Okay good point, in fact very good point. Hell I'll even be the big woman and not make a bad rubber joke connecting my powers and safe sex."

"You also realize that having children means that we won't be able to have quite as quite as much free time together." Susan just sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Yeah I know, its all about dividing my time and my energy. I figure the kids can have my eyes and my boobs, and my hands while you can have my mouth and everything below my belly button. They get everything they need, you get everything you need, believe me I've been practicing; I think I can do some very impressive things with my legs..."

Reed just looked right at Susan who slumped slightly. "Yeah I know, my internal 'mom' sense tells me that's a very bad idea, sex and feeding the kids at the same time, that's the kind of thing that could make a lady develop neurosis and Lord knows I'd already bend over backwards for you. So tell you what, let's go look after our kids first and deal with things from there. Race ya!"

In seconds Susan had transformed her body into a bouncing ball that was careening down the corridors. Reed watched her go and sighed now finally free to casually (or a least as casually as one could) rub the growing hard-on in his pants. "Sooner or later that woman is going to wear you down to a nub..." The organ in question didn't seem to mind the prospect and as Reed drew in another deep breath he had to admit that indeed this was one sense of impending doom that he was perfectly capable of living with.

--

A few days after that one night Susan and Reed were together in his lab. "Well our kids seem to be safely asleep for the night, and we've got the Baxter Building's security systems set up so that if any of them make much noises that aren't natural doing sleep we'll know at once, I think it's time to do some research."

Susan nodded, and smiled. "You know, as opposed to playing around with the building's security systems, we could have just bought a baby monitor, those seem to work fairly well for most people." Reed shrugged. "Ehh, all play and no needlessly complex gadgets to build can drive a man mad at which point he starts building gadgets which have the wrong kind of point to them. Besides this way there's no way we can miss it if the system detects a sound in the room greater then 100 decibels, something a child's cry is bound to achieve.. Now then, there's been a particular experiment that I've been dying to conduct on you and your powers for two months, but I decided it might be a bad idea while you were pregnant."

Reed gestured and a grey cloth flew off to the side, revealing something that looked like little more than a large grey cylinder. "So do I get an explanation beforehand or is it going to be a surprise?" Reed walking over the to the tank and picked up a grey hose that was attached to it. "This particular experiment is designed to watch how your organs rearrange themselves to deal with a considerable amount of internal pressure. Luckily I've already seen your ability to handle something like this a few months back, even if it was on a smaller scale so I'm fairly certain you won't have to worry about the kind of problems that other people would develop from having bodies too saturated with water. I had the idea when you compared yourself to a blubbery whale about two months back."

Susan smiled wistfully. "Ahh the whimsies of childhood turning into the perversities of adulthood, is there any more beautiful sight in the world?" Reed shook his head as he patted the cylinder. "This tank is full of water which I'm about to pump into your body and then observe what happens. So if you don't mind, just put this in your mouth and keep sucking till it runs dry." Susan looked at Reed and then licked her lips. "Does sort of sound like fun, though from anyone else I'd expect that last sentence to have a VERY different connotation to it."

Susan struck the hose in her mouth wrapping her lips tightly around it, and Reed turned on the flow of water. At first Susan's cheeks bulged out like a chipmunk storing nuts for the winter, but this effect soon vanished as she began to rapidly swallow gallon after gallon of water.

It started in her belly, but that didn't mean it was like being pregnant. Her belly wasn't just pushing outward, Susan could also felt her backside expanding extremely rapidly and to a great size then it ever had while she was pregnant. The good news was that this meant she hadn't constantly had to deal with how being pregnant made her need to subtly lean backwards to counteract the weight of her belly. The bad news was that when she tried to take a step forward the combined weight of her belly and ass kept her firmly rooted in place.

She shifted stance shifted slightly and she felt the water starting to pour into her legs, making them grow larger and heavier as well. Then once again she felt her hips and ass growing larger, not so much drooping over her legs, but joining together so that from the waist down she was nothing but one large sphere. One large sphere that evidently had plans on seizing the upper half of her body as well.

She felt her arms, hands, and breasts growing larger, but not large or fast enough to escape the continuing swell of her spherical mid-and lower body until they too were utterly absorbed. Susan felt her cheeks starting to puff out again and then the flood of water stopped. She spat out the hose and all the water that was currently stored in her cheeks then smiled. "Wow, you certainly look a lot smaller from up here. So what next?"

Reed walked behind her and pushed against her back, while the sheer weight of her body would have normally made moving it impossible, her current let her roll fairly well. By the time he was done pushing Susan hadn't rolled gone far but her head was now level with Reed's. "Actually my equipment is already recording all the quantitative data that I'll need on the subject, which just leaves the qualitative half, how do you feel?"

Susan tired to shrug but she only ended up rippling slightly. "Not as nice as before, but then that's probably because you used cold water. Other than that can't complain, it isn't too bad, there's a comfortable fullness to it, like after a good meal. I could probably undo it if I wanted to by stretching and then tightening my body in the right places but at the moment..."

All of a sudden the entire room was cast in a disturbing red light. "I suddenly want to get rid of all this very, very quickly! That's just the kids are crying alarm, and not supervillians are attacking right?" Reed nodded as he raced over to the tank played with the dial on it, then came back over and offered Susan the hose once again. She accepted it, and this time instead of pumping water in, it got to work sucking the stuff out of her even faster than it had gone in. "Yes, if the Baxter Building was under attack then there would be sirens as well."

In no time at all Susan Richards once again looking like a superheroine instead of a gigantic blue ball pulled the hose from her mouth. "Well that's half a load off my shoulders. You know where I'm going." "I'll see you there soon." Susan formed her lower legs into a spring firing herself at the door out of Reed's lab without waiting for him to open it. This had the expected results, but the blue blob that her body was reduced to by the impact once again managed to slip under the door that Reed was so sure was impenetrable.

He sighed and returned to his computer took care of making sure the data was properly stored and did what he always did, thought. There were of course stories though he'd never done research about women doing incredible things to save their children, like being able to temporarily lift weights that should have been well beyond their body's capacity.

But then what was the actual capacity of the human body? Was it defined as what it could normally do, or what it could do with the proper motivation and situation? During that mental fight with Victor the sight of Susan at his mercy had given him some kind of "adrenaline" boost which should have been impossible since he'd lacked the glands necessary to produce such chemicals.

So what exactly defined a human being? That was a question that he'd probably be working on trying to find an answer to for the rest of his life.

--

By the time Reed got to the nursery it was all over. Each and every single one of their six children lay sleeping peacefully and by elongating her arms Susan was managing to rock all six of their cribs at once. "One of the little dears was hungry for a midnight snack and she woke the others up, but I took care of it and changed them all for good measure."

Reed nodded approvingly. "I told you, you that you'd make a great mother." Susan smiled, allowing her hands to return to normal but stretching her neck out so that she could whisper her words in his ear, that way she was less likely to wake up their children of course. "Yeah I know. If it's all the same, you've got your lab and all the data from that experiment to look after, but I think I'm gonna just stay in here for tonight. That way if any more problems crop up I'll already be 'on-site' at the expression goes. I figure I'll just sort of curl up into a ball in a corner and use my own body for a pillow until I'm needed."

Reed walked towards Susan making her shorten her neck in order to keep it right next to his. "I wish you wouldn't." Susan gave a firm shake of her long neck. "Sorry Reed, maybe we can do more research tomorrow, and I know that the short a delay between me finding out and getting here didn't really matter, but I just can't see myself leaving this room tonight."

By the time she was done speaking Reed was right next to her. "I know, the message I was trying to convey was that I wish you wouldn't just curl up into a ball, because then I won't have any place to sleep."

Susan's eyes got noticeably wider and popped out of their sockets for just a fraction of a second. "Reed, don't you have all that data on me that you want to look over?" Reed laid a hand comforting on Susan's shoulder. "It'll be there in the morning. In fact letting my machines play with the data on their own for a while might help me get to the important points without needing to commit as many actual man-hours to the task."

So a bit more than nine months after you got to know me in this new body, are you still willing to be the bed?" Susan nodded taking Reed by the hand and leading him towards an empty part of the room. She fell forwards elongating her body into a blue bed that would comfortably sleep one. Reed didn't bother getting undressed, he just sat down on Susan, grabbed a handful of her elastic flesh near one end of her body and pulled it up towards the other manufacturing a sheet. Susan for her part managed to provide a pillow that Reed rested his head on, and as he looked up at the ceiling, enjoying the silence of the room broken only by sounds of the eight beings within drawing breath.

At least it was until he heard a slight humming in his ears and felt Susan's body begin to shift back and forth gently. Reed momentarily propped himself up on an elbow looking down at a slightly exaggerated version of Susan's face that adorned the bed. "You're trying to rock me to sleep the same way you did them aren't you?"

The bed contorted slightly as Susan gave a full body shrug. "Sorry force of habit." "I didn't say there was anything wrong with it, I was enjoying it in fact, if I haven't said so before you have a very soothing voice. Besides, at the end of the day a scientist really is nothing more then a child, because they see a world full of things that need to be poked, prodded, and studied so that they can be better understood."

Susan's head rose up out of the bed, and kissed Reed on the cheek. "Then I guess it was only a matter of time till you ended up in here. By the way are you thirsty? I'm pretty sure even after dealing with our children I've still got at least one glass worth of milk on me somewhere." Reed shook his head solemnly. "No I'm good, and you can feel how damp my tongue is if you need to be sure."

The two shared a chuckle, at that, and then Reed laid back down and Susan went back to her chanting. The last thoughts that Reed Richards had before he fell quite comfortably asleep was that when you got right down to it Susan Storm really was an Ultra Woman in every sense of the word: lover, superheroine, wife, and mother.

End Chapter

End Fic.

AN: If you've come this far I'd appreciate you leaving a review. As for a sequel, it'll be around eventually but first I have to be about finishing the prequel to this fic Original Twist which I've already started posting here if you haven't noticed already.


End file.
